When I bought my house, the first to-do item I was assigned was painting the bathroom.
As of this month, I’ve lived here a year, and we finally got the bathroom painted this weekend. It took us this long because we were a bit undecided on the paint color. After we thought we’d decided, weekends slipped away and our chance to get things done disappeared. By the time a free weekend presented itself, our opinions of the color changed once again.
Too light. Too dark. Not the right hue. Doesn’t match the other features of the room. Different reasons helped us procrastinate for quite some time.
Until yesterday when we finally said “enough,” picked a color, and carved time out of our day to finish the room once and for all.
It might not be the perfect shade, but it’s different. It also demonstrates that we can get the project done. That changing the color of a room is a task that doesn’t warrant a year of indecision. That we can now move on to other, more important parts of the house.
I’ve often heard WordPress themes referred to as the paint job that skins a site. Some site owners change their themes so frequently it’s hard to know what to expect each time you come back.
Once upon a time, I thought the visual identity of a site was so important that I held back changing my theme entirely. As a matter of fact, this site has only had 5 designs in the 7 years it’s been online!
But I realize now just how much a new “paint job” can liven up an old space and bring new life to the lifeless. A blog, like this one, is more about the brand affixed to a body of knowledge conveyed through writing. My brand is more than the visual identity of this blog, and it’s time I embraced that with a change.
I’ve been using the Sixteen Nine theme by StudioPress for just shy of a year, and I love it! But is it the best way to convey my content? Is it interactive enough that readers can have engaging experiences?
What more can I do, through design, to help my message reach the world? I’d like to find out, and I plan to experiment heavily in the coming months.