Theres something slightly endearing to the thought of a brilliant site, with incredible content and with a beautiful layout and design. Unfortunately it is rare you get such combinations.

Therefore, for people who have a problem understanding whats good looking, and whats not. Here’s a rough idea of what I believe is good and bad about some designs on the web today.

At that’s an idea, I thoroughly believe the writers here, including myself, have tried to post interesting and intuitive posts that can benefit, or at least cause a slight flicker of interest with the average reader.

As much as I am thankful for Lawrence’s effort of getting the site up, working and having committed authors, I thoroughly dislike the current theme being used. I know this may be widely disagreed with, but personally I do not like the K2 theme. At least the basic K2 theme, I think, like with all things, a bit of a tweak and this could be a very good looking theme. Maybe with none of the content background and just one whole white page with the columns, would be a nicer looking theme, a bit more minimalistic.

A perfect theme I believe, for this is by far my favorite theme ever created, is from a website called Astheria. It is a stunning theme, it’s minimalistic, well designed, great use of giant letters, which are pretty much the rage these days. And it has a great background with all the + symbols. The only part I don’t like, which I would change immediately is the RSS Feed Icon at the bottom of the page, otherwise I love this theme to death. I love the archives it has which are really interestingly laid out, enticing, and fun to use. And most importantly it is really well written and is very professionally done.

Astheria is a believe a prototypical blog, great content, beautifully laid out, well written and very appropriate to it’s target audience. Another fantastic blog, is another blog with a weird name, the blog belongs to a design company from Poland, the company is called Arsthanea and it has a really really nice blog. Another blog with a great minimalistic design and another blog which is really well written. One of the things I love about this blog is it’s great use of images, every post pretty much has a photo, graphic, or some kind of eye candy and it really makes it a much nicer blog to read.

Moving on. It is rare that I will stop reading a blog because of an appalling theme, because my belief is that blogs are to be read, not that style isn’t important, but for example, and this isn’t a great example, but PSD Tuts which is a website I have always read because of the great content the blog contains, but personally, I really don’t like the theme. I understand it’s simplistic, easy to read which is the main thing. But I personally am not a big fan of it. I don’t think it’s the worst theme in the world, but I’d like it a bit more if there was a more stylish, good looking theme. It’s not like the creator Collis Ta’eed cannot design really good looking sites, look at his personal site! Look at his company Eden’s website, their all really nice looking sites, just a little flair in the theme would be quite cool.

Before I sign off, please, please, please understand one thing. This is a huge belief for me that blogs should always be CONTENT over STYLE. Write your blogs well and people will read it. Write about interesting topics, and subjects people will read it. Have a good looking theme people will glance at it. Have both and you’ve got a great blog going.

Thanks. Simon.