If you like CSS and you want to customise the look of your WordPress blog, then the Sandbox theme is for you.
Totally plain, minimalist, widgets-friendly and valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional, you can give it any look you want simply by customising the CSS; there is no need to touch the HTML at all.
To see just how flexible this theme is, take a look at the results of last year’s Sandbox Design Competition.
Can you do better?

In this set of posts, I shall take you through some basic steps in how to develop your own themes. The tasks shall be broken into stages.

1. Setting up a local installation of WordPress
2. Thinking about design
3. Creating a new theme
4. Testing your theme
5. Finishing your theme

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For a lot of WordPress users that want an individual blog, designing their own theme is as important as the content for showing off flourishes in personality. Many bloggers work tirelessly on their themes, trying to create the perfect reflection of the artist’s intentions.

It could be that you have designed your perfect site but what do your readers think? This isn’t a question that is easily answered: you can’t expect every visitor to comment on how your theme looks. The WordPress community forum has introduced a new section, where WordPress users can nominate their sites to be the subject of the community’s critique. For each site submitted, a registered user can comment on each theme based on presentation, use of colours and graphics, use of WordPress’ tools and features, as well as the all-important code validation.

Your WordPress has already many designs under inspection, and from reading the threads there already, you can see that a lot have improved as a result.

Once you have your own independent blog, one of the first things you may want to do is personalise it. With WordPress, you are free to install your own themes. The Sandbox can boast to be one of the most flexible themes around.

The Sandbox comes with its own simple skins, but you are free to change them, find another one, or make your own from scratch. The flexibility of the theme can be seen from the entrants of the Sandbox Designs Competition (SDC), from which you can download and use any of the entries.

Creator Scott Wallick describes his theme:

The Sandbox is a theme for themers. It has the ability to be easily skinned, so beginners will feel comfortable styling it since they only need to know CSS. More experienced designers will drool at the rich semantic markup and profusion of classes, dynamically generated by a few functions.