One of my projects to finish out 2015 is to create a new WordPress theme. Getting more concrete than that has been hard – it’s clear I’ve never really worked on a design process before. To help get me going I started scanning through the theme directory for WordPress.com and speaking out loud why I liked certain themes.
I gained some traction once I realized the most compelling statements were not about any technical element, but how the theme made me feel. What the theme seemed to help inspire. Kind of like how Apostrophe makes me want to start a magazine, I want the theme I make to have the same effect on someone.
After some brain dumping (I dump, I don’t storm) it became clear that I’d like my theme to inspire gaming and fantasy – like D&D which I love so much. If my theme inspires even one person to blog about their gaming, or to game in the first place, it’s a success.
With that in mind I started wireframing. First, some mobile ideas…
And next, a front page reminiscent of a character sheet…
Obviously there’s a ways to go, but now I’ve got some near-term goals I work on to get the project running. Working name is “Loot.”
Alex Gustafson 
3 replies on “My First Theme”
Is this going to be for wordpress.com or wordpress.org?
Designing it for a .org setup at first – but I plan to show it the WordPress.com theme team when I submit it to the .org repo. So if it ends up being good enough they might okay it for.com. I hope I can design it well enough to make the cut! 😀
That is an awesome idea. I hear that is is harder to get a theme out for .com.