Using GIMP to Plan a Theme

I started work on a new theme last night and, after brainstorming a bit, put together a quick mockup in GIMP. This is only the second time I've used GIMP to flesh out a theme and I'm pretty happy with the results.

The index page of the theme, which you can see to the right, is meant to do something a bit different. Rather than showing the most recent 5 posts it's going to be setup to display the most recent topics from each category. I made this decision because I wanted the blog to look more like a professional news site than a true blog.

While the content block on the index page is setup to show categories and post titles the right column (which will basically be the sidebar) will house ads, widgets and badges. The big red blocks you see are how I usually consider ad placement. They basically represent hot-zones and are goodfor helping determine if there are too many ads in a given area.

If it looks like there are a lot of ads there it's mostly because that site is going to be aimed at making affiliate sales. Tonight I'll be blocking out the single post pages as well as the category and custom pages.

Let me know what you think,