Most website have taken the separation of content and style to such a bizarre extreme, sites resemble nothing so much as a junk drawer.
One website had a beautiful Flash header based around “balance.” While the header actually used the word, nothing else on the site made use of the promising potential theme.
Consequently, the header came off as a disconnected, pretty, gimmick.
A site for a web development firm features a lone tree on a grassy plain. Why? Why not. That’s what happens when people are let loose on stock photography sites without a plan or purpose.
Throw It At The Web and See What Sticks
Despite the best efforts of the creatives, two themes dominate the web: Monkey-See, Monkey-Do and Because We Can.
Branding, if you can call it that, is like the guy at your high school reunion who never made any impression on you whatsoever and whose name you can’t remember.
This is not a theme. This is the graphic artist doing one thing; the content writer doing another – and never the twain shall meet. Sharing a container does not mean a design comes together in the minds of site visitors.
How You Theme a Web Site
A theme is where a header using the word balance has writing which then expands on the idea. If you’re a business consultancy (as was the case with the Flash example I mentioned), you describe what in business is out of balance. Then you explain what your consulting does to restore balance.
Simplicity itself. Yet just try to find such coherent themes on the web. No. What you find would be much better termed styling – not theming.
Yet without the coherence where all elements of a site focus on communicating the theme, the word “branding” comes off as utter hogwash.
Use a tree on a plain for a web developer. Fine, then explain what that has to do with anything – other than you were bored. Explain, for instance, the philosophy of using a CMS because it will grow along with your client.
Current best practices demand content separate from structure, with are both in turn separated from style. The role of design is reintegrating these elements in a way which communicates a unified theme to the visitor.
Not the client. Not the creative sitting behind their computer. The user.
Web design themes can weave a common thread of meaning between graphics, written content, even layout and site structure. But you first must entertain the website is not a firewall to keep programmers and graphics people, content writers and strategist apart. Design brings them all together.