Every time I think about a re-design of the blog I fight an internal battle between a straightforward and simple layout and a cool ‘hacker-like’ theme, filled with transparencies and cool images. I’ve always enjoyed the so-called Fantasy User Interfaces you see on TV on shows like CSI and 24 and in movies like Die Hard 4 which are full of swift animations, sleek window design and overall damned good looks. (Check out Mark Coleran’s work)
On the flipside, when it comes to blogging the key focus is the writing, and smooth minimalist designs that really bring the focus back to the text can be very attractive. So when I chose my current theme, I thought I was getting a mixture of both. An interesting and eye catching design but with a clean and straightforward layout for the posts. But it took me a while to settle on a theme, and even now I’m not particular sure I like it. So I thought I would give you a look into the themes I narrowed it down to.
The Minimalist
Surprisingly, a large proportion of my choices were in this area. I think its hard because at times I want my site to be a full featured site, with daily updates full of interesting news and articles collected from all over the web. Conversely, I have no time to do any of that and my site reverts to a standard blog, and the minimalist themes suit that style of writing better.
Elegant Grunge
Besides having a cool name, this theme offered a nice blend of dark and light. I love charcoal greys and really thought the contract of the header and body was attractive. What I didn’t like was the way it tended to mangle my tweets on the right hand side, and the lack of justification in the sidebar made it feel untidy and distracting.
Simple Dark
Another elegant theme, the dark gradient really appealed to me, as did the better separation of the twitter posts, making it much easier on the eyes. I only steered clear of this one as I often use dark themes and wanted to go for something with lighter colours.
Margot
Another neat theme with a good contrast between light and dark. Once again however, the lack of support for my Twitter feed caused me to toss this one aside. The design is very smooth however, and very much appeals to me if I were just reading/writing posts.
The Pretty
These few themes were ones that I found visually attractive. I actually have a lot more, but I am trying to move away from this sort of style and into something a bit cleaner and more professional.
Motion
Motion is a beautiful theme to look at, incorporating transparent bars and a futuristic background along with a clearly separated sidebar area. However, it’s almost a little too distracting and really takes away from the posts themselves. In this case, eye candy isn’t everything.
Game Site
Game site is a theme designed for news and articles. It was originally made for games but can be used along with wordpress categories to create a fully integrated platform, with featured posts, thumbed posts, javascript and ajax functionality. However, in order to do all that considerable time must be spent in configuration along with graphics design and implementation. Far too much work for me…
The Blend
These are the themes that I felt had a nice mix of simplistic layouts but pleasing to look at as well.
White Gold
This theme uses a 3 column layout – something I normally don’t like, but its blend of colours and slight 3D looks from the shadows makes it feel very natural. When it comes to reading, the layout is simple and concise although it doesn’t seem to like line breaks in text. For someone like me who loves paragraphs as a way to break up subjects or topics, it was a major downside to an otherwise great theme.
Desk Scape
Perhaps by the time you are reading this the above theme is how my site looks. This is because Desk Scape is the one other theme that I would really consider sticking with. It’s layout is clean and simple with great use of layers. The one problem that turned me away from this theme is the post summarising which occurs beneath the most recent post. As I would be moving towards a blog, this would be one feature that I think would decrease readability and flow.
zeePersonal & zeeSynergie
Both these themes have a nice clean feel to them and each provides an easy to read post. One thing that I really don’t like about them however is their use of the categories as a sidebar, and difficulty in making them a top bar. However as simple but attractive layouts go, these two are pretty good.
So there you have it. My current theme was the best out of this bunch although there are still plenty out there if I ever feel the need to change. What do you think? Drop me a comment (top right) and let me know!
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