Are you familiar with The Thesis Aesthetic? Normally you want something that is aesthetically pleasing. Somehow along the way people have been seduced by, what I call, the “Thesis Aesthetic.”

This aesthetic comes from the belief that simply running the premium Wordpress theme known as Thesis, will ensure success of your blog or online business. It’s like magic! Install Thesis and your search engine rankings will change overnight, and you’ll make more money because it is very professional. However, there is a big problem with The Thesis Aesthetic: It’s the default layout and lacking customization, branding and personality.

The Thesis Aesthetic is screaming:

Look I’m a blogger and I’m serious about this! You call tell because I use the Thesis Theme. You should take me seriously now and buy my stuff.

Are you confused by what I mean? I’m talking about the blogs haven’t bothered to try and make their blog look unique. You’ve probably seen it a million times. It’s very sterile and cold but covered up by the idea of minimalism or professionalism. The very sad thing to me is that I believe these bloggers want everyone to notice they are running it as their blog theme.

Now don’t get me wrong, I love Thesis and think Chris Pearson did an amazing job. There is so much potential within Thesis but it’s starting to litter the Internet landscape. There has been a bunch of amazing designs that I’ve come across, but there is still a huge number of default layouts out there.  I know Chris has an update planned soon, but I am not sure what’s going to be within it (I do talk about this a little bit toward the end of this article). In the 1.6 upgrade, the design admin was changed so that it gave more control over color choice and in a simplistic way. There might be a few blogs out there that used it, but the ones I’ve seen are still very sterile and littered with advertisements in both sidebar columns. If this is all you were going to do, you would have been fine with a free wordpress theme because you would have saved money and had mediocre look. A slight variation of the theme is actually ruining your blog.

I took a screen shot of Thesis from within my admin section so that I wasn’t going to flame any specific blogs I saw. I don’t want this post to be about that.  I hope this post helps to push some owners to fix some issues.  When you see this screen shot, think about this look but with a different title in the header.  This is the Thesis Aesthetic:

Here are the biggest reasons:

• You appear to lack creativity
• You don’t have a distinguishable brand
• You don’t give me anything to connect with in the form of branding
• You lack visual impact and I will immediately question the content

I probably sound like a jerk. I am just trying to help you bring something unique to the table.  I want people to have a blog that is memorable from the second it loads.  Thesis has so much potential that’s left in the original box.  Any theme you go with has a lot of potential if you just look deeper within the box instead of loading the theme and forgetting about it.  There is so much information in the online community for such a popular Wordpress theme (check out Matt Flies for some great tutorials), but get a designer to help you when don’t have time to brand your own site.

The internet is a very visual arena and the eyes have a very short attention span.

Version 1.6 was apparently about design, but I don’t see a sexier internet because of it.  I’d be more than willing to help any owners of the theme.  Check out this screen shot from Safari.  It is the websites I seem to frequent, but I wondered if anything stands out to you?  This is something I’ve started to consider when skinning themes.  I know the green is not for everyone, but I’m loving it and it’s a part of my brand strategy.

If you’re hoping the next upgrade (1.7) is going to help you with your branding, guess again.  Version 1.7 is more on the technical side and I admit, they’ve got me confused.  I have a developers license so I’ll get to try out the beta soon.

You don’t need a version upgrade to fix the problem that happen due to the Thesis Aesthetic.  Look at my blog here! Yes, I am using Thesis and I’ve customized a lot of features. The custom CSS file is full of changes. I still have aspects that I want to tweak but there comes a point where you need to stop and write some content or work on shipping some ideas. I have a great post in the works for that topic though.

If you’re someone with the basic-out-of-the-box Thesis Aesthetic, it’s not too late.  You’ve got a great framework that needs some visual love.  While branding isn’t always visual, the internet is a very visual arena and the eyes have a very short attention span.  Having a well branded and creative look for your Thesis site could actually get you a lot of attention from showcase sites (like CSS Mania for example).  Start thinking about it and don’t let this aesthetic continue to seduce you or hold your brand back.