This is an emacs color theme based on the tango palette colors.

Here is a screenshot of the color theme with an emacs-lisp file :

One with a Gnus summary and article buffers :

And one with an org-mode buffer :

Emacs 24 features native color theming, and as such you don’t need any third party package or extension.

1. Download tangotango-theme.el from github and save it to your ~/.emacs.d directory
2. Try it with M-x load-theme
3. If you like it, just add the following line to your .emacs :

(load-theme 'tangotango t)

If you prefer to place your theme files in another directory, you can just add something like the following in your .emacs before loading the theme :

(add-to-list 'custom-theme-load-path "~/.emacs.d/color-theme-tangotango")

With Emacs 23 you need to use the color-theme package :

1. Download and install the color-theme emacs package either via your linux distribution or via the source tarball
2. Download and install color-theme-tangotango.el from github
3. Make sure that both color-theme.el and color-theme-tangotango.el are in your load path

There are several ways to load the tangotango color theme from your .emacs, as documented on emacswiki. The way I currently use should work for a daemonized emacs and allows the selection of different themes for GUI or console based frames :

(require 'color-theme)
(setq color-theme-load-all-themes nil)

(require 'color-theme-tangotango)

;; select theme - first list element is for windowing system, second is for console/terminal
;; Source : http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/ColorTheme#toc9
(setq color-theme-choices 
      '(color-theme-tangotango color-theme-tangotango))

;; default-start
(funcall (lambda (cols)
    	   (let ((color-theme-is-global nil))
    	     (eval 
    	      (append '(if (window-system))
    		      (mapcar (lambda (x) (cons x nil)) 
    			      cols)))))
    	 color-theme-choices)

;; test for each additional frame or console
(require 'cl)
(fset 'test-win-sys 
      (funcall (lambda (cols)
    		 (lexical-let ((cols cols))
    		   (lambda (frame)
    		     (let ((color-theme-is-global nil))
		       ;; must be current for local ctheme
		       (select-frame frame)
		       ;; test winsystem
		       (eval 
			(append '(if (window-system frame)) 
				(mapcar (lambda (x) (cons x nil)) 
					cols)))))))
    	       color-theme-choices ))
;; hook on after-make-frame-functions
(add-hook 'after-make-frame-functions 'test-win-sys)

(color-theme-tangotango)

Note that I also had to add a (color-theme-tangotango) line at the end of my .gnus file in order to apply the color theme to Gnus.