In researching WordPress themes, it’s hard for me to like most of them, I think because they all look generic and most of them follow the same format of the giant full-screen hero image, followed by 2 or 3 columns of text, or text and images, but of course those types of layouts are useful and are what people are used to interacting with, so most people will choose those. On the other hand, I don’t like when websites try too hard to be completely different and new, because the user (me) has to take a few minutes to figure out where the navigation is and what does what, and how the information flows. I think most people want to be able to find information quickly, and have it presented to them in a pleasing, organized way. It depends on your audience too, what type of people are using your website, if it’s high-tech people then they may like all the flashy new, harder to use websites with videos that play automatically, but typical people don’t want to be bothered with that, especially if they are in a hurry. Also, a lot of the WordPress theme previews use a generic sans-serif fonts, which don’t help their appeal, but that is the point of them, to be a blank slate for the business to customize, so you have to look beyond that and see their potential, almost like a fixer-upper house.
Anyway, in general I was attracted to the themes that use black and white as their base, with one accent color. It keeps it clean and simple, elegant, yet modern. I want to have my website be something along those lines, and maybe use one line of color, or maybe it will have one giant background image with an opaque overlay, and then have white boxes of text, with pictures, and a black and white nav at the top, or a black side bar nav…just brainstorming really, need to draft it up.
Rikke was a good theme, mostly black and white, Zeal is nice, it uses black as it’s main color and uses giant images with an overlay to tone them down, like what I was thinking about above. For now, I chose Olsen Light as my theme because I like that it pairs a serif font with a sans-serif, uses black and white, and is straightforward and to the point, when it comes to reading a blog. I like the content/posts on the left and the other info in a small column to the right, probably because people look to the left first when reading so it makes sense. I also like the use of line elements, it reminds me of something Vogue would do.