I love this New Basic theme (link below) because it provides a very basic design that is ripe for enhancing or modifying. I’ve decided to start the process by simply firing up Photoshop and using the current theme as a sort of wireframe, I will then construct a possible UI design and then translate it to the theme.
The key here is understanding the core components and having the knowledge to manipulate the HTML to get them to dance the way you want them. I have been very fortunate and I was exposed to HTML and Adobe Photoshop at the same time and early on which enabled me to identify the limitations of the HTML code that will be tricky (not impossible) to replicate from a Photoshop PSD. Below is what I see when I look at the theme and while most section can still be broken down into smaller elements, I decided to do that as incremental updates.
Screen shot of the original theme at the start of my blog
