I wrote already that I am overall happy with the Twenty Ten theme but as I said, the Twenty Ten theme has some major flaws if you use it on a blog with lots of photos. Apart from this problem there are other flaws with many themes here on WordPress.com that turn me off. They usually upload themes that have a very huge header and you can upload your own images but if you want your header to be very tiny, it won´t work in most cases and to be honest, meanwhile I tested most of the themes. If there was one theme with a minimal header, then there were other problems with the theme like fancy bits of graphical elements that turned me off.

I know, choosing the right theme is really a matter of taste but I really had problems to find a theme that does meet my standards. I am minimalist, I like it slick, modern and the text content or the photos should attract the reader’s attention, not a supersized header or any fancy graphical elements that highlight or separate areas of the blog like the content area or sidebar, because there is no need for a graphical separation in my opinion. Yes, a graphical element like a cooking spoon that appears over each article might look fancy on a cooking blog but if you ask me, I even would hate it if my blog would be only about food.

I could rant even more about different themes we can use here but as said, it´s just a matter of taste and your opinion might be different and that is ok. I just can say that I had a hard time to find the right theme for my blog and I tested them all. I am not even completely happy with the Twenty Ten theme that I use at the time I write all this here. So, a long time has passed but then…

Today I got a wordpress mail as I subscribed to their blog and they introduced a new theme called Big Brother. Beforehand, this is a theme that I am in love with and I could imagine to use it but only with the design upgrade because how could it else be? I found a few flaws there too but I talk about it later. First I want to mention that this is a theme I would give the tags “modern”, “clean”, “minimalist”.

I am surprised that they write in the introduction that this theme would be good for big organizations because I do think this theme will address also other bloggers because it is focused around the content, it has a very tiny header that is still big enough to carry a logo or image. It has a very nice looking menu bar and looks so sorted in generally. I agree that this is a clean design but I would disagree with them because they also write that it is a traditional design. I rather would say it is a modern design because recently all big magazines and blogs (Example: TechCrunch, Digital Trends and I could mention more) noticed that you don´t need to torture your readers with a header that even eats a 40% surface of a modern high-resolution screen. A 200 pixel height of a header is way enough to give a blog a signature. The theme Big Brother comes with such a minimal header and that´s what I love and it´s a theme I waited for since some time.

But I am a very picky person and as said, I found a few flaws with this theme too, otherwise I would have activated the theme right away. I have a test blog, it´s basically a copy of this blog here but private and only I can access it. It´s basically my sandbox where I can mess around and test things without changing anything on my real and public blogs. Even if there are a few flaws with the new theme, I tested it and was able to get the theme right and how I like it. The only problem is that I will need this custom design upgrade to make it my favorite theme.

The main problem is the huge font size of the article headings. The second problem is that I dislike the font and font size of the content text. I am ok with the colors but I probably would make the sidebar background colour the same as the overall background color. I maybe even would go so far to change the other colors of the theme but they don´t annoy me. It´s more about the fonts and about the size of the fonts. Everything else like setting up the sidebar, creating and uploading my own header and other things, is self-evident.

So, with the custom design upgrade I could change this theme to my liking, I could remove all of the flaws I see. Then it would be “that” theme I was waiting for since years. I really could image to use this theme with the design upgrade that I would need to activate then too. I would use this theme immediately if there wouldn´t be another problem. I run ads on my blog that are only visible for not logged in users or people who aren´t WordPress users. I´m not sure if this new theme supports WordAds, which is why I wrote them a mail to clarify this question. If the answer is positive, I probably will change the theme.

Like I said, lot´s of the stuff I wrote here is really a matter of taste, I just was so excited about this new theme that I was inspired to write my thoughts down. I didn´t post anything on this blog here since some days and my thoughts about the themes did bring me back.