Custom Themes: The Case for Unique WordPress Design in the Arts

You work with a great team of people at an arts & culture organization, and have been put in charge of managing your web presence. Where to begin? Maybe your organization is brand new, or maybe it’s been around for years. You might be in beed of a simple brochure-style site or need to migrate thousands of posts and pages to a new look. You’ve been told that WordPress is easy to use, and has tons of themes and plugins available. There are so many options!

Making those theme and plugin decisions can be overwhelming, and might not even be right for you! We’ll take a look at your options and make the case for creating a custom theme to power your web presence.

Custom Themes vs. Off-the-shelf WordPress

How do you go about choosing a theme? Why even choose a theme?

When people talk about themes in WordPress, they generally refer to open-source themes available from the theme directory or their paid counterparts. These range from the default yearly themes that are baked into WordPress, to independently produced themes, to sprawling page builders built and maintained by companies devoted to them.

Custom themes are personalized experiences created by a developer or agency to fit specific use cases. In the past, this tended to include purpose-driven design with hardcoded templates which mapped specific fields to a specific area of output on the page. Now these custom experiences tend to include a mix of templated functionality, custom blocks and patterns, to provide ultimate flexibility.

Considerations for off-the-shelf WordPress themes

One consideration for off-the-shelf WordPress themes is the expected lifespan. If you select one of the core themes included with WordPress, you know that you’ll get continued support for quite a long time, as updates tend to get ported backwards. Beyond that, it’s hard to say how long your theme might be supported. If it was created by a solo developer, it could be a one-and-done, with little to no support. A theme created by a larger organization, especially if it’s a paid product, may have a longer support window.

Another consideration is functionality. The creator of the theme is not trying to give you what you need, they’re trying to appeal to a broader market. Often clients approach us after they’ve hit a wall in terms of functionality. They can get close to what they want, but can’t take it all the way.

Addressing concerns about custom themes

One of the biggest complaints about custom work is that you need developers to make changes to your site. This is true for most CMS’s, including WordPress, Drupal, Adobe Experience Manager, and many headless implementations. You don’t want a developer on retainer for every little change that you want to make to your site. You should be able to do as much as possible on your own.

Making your own changes

The block editor included with WordPress since 2019 goes a long way in terms of helping you manage your website without developer intervention. It offers a familiar visual editing experience that you might see in Squarespace or Wix. On top of the variety of blocks included with WordPress, we work with you to build custom blocks and patterns, which help you achieve flexible yet precise layouts that fit within your identity.

Lifespan & maintenance

Similar to off-the-shelf themes, you don’t know what sort of lifespan you’ll get from custom development work. Much of it depends on the developer or agency that you choose to work with. At Plank, we try to stick as closely as possible to standard WordPress development. This means that if you’re not happy with our relationship, it allows you to take the work that we’ve done and find someone else to continue. We’re not trying to lock you into needing our services, although of course we hope to continue collaborating with our partners long term.

The unique needs of the arts sector

Aesthetics and creativity are of paramount importance in the arts and entertainment industry. Alongside the functionality of your website, you will be judged. Your website should reflect those values and be an extension of your organization.

Aesthetics and creativity are of paramount importance in the arts and entertainment industry. Unlike other sectors, where functionality often takes precedence, arts organizations are judged as much on the visual appeal as experience, as they are on the quality of their work. Your website is more than a digital brochure — it’s an extension of your organization’s identity and values, acting as a virtual stage or gallery.

Custom themes play a critical role in ensuring that your website mirrors the uniqueness of your brand and identity. Bespoke designs allow you to break free from the constraints of generic templates, and create a site that captures your artistic vision.

Benefits of custom themes

Custom themes offer unparalleled advantages for arts organizations and creatives by enabling unique, brand-aligned designs.

Unique design

The biggest benefit to using a custom theme is the opportunity to be involved in the discovery and design phase. This allows for a deep dive into your organization, to help figure out what your specific needs are. A custom theme can provide both flexibility and control, which is tailored to you.

On brand

Another major benefit of a custom solution is the opportunity to work within your brand guidelines. This extends to everything from logo treatment and branding colours to unique elements and accents that would not be available otherwise.

Hybrid, not headless

If you’re looking into custom web solutions, you’ve probably heard about headless websites. Those sites typically involve a snappy JavaScript interface driven by a separate API. The benefit is a very fast and responsive site, that can come at the expense of design and layout flexibility. With our custom WordPress themes, we take a hybrid approach that allows some sections of your site, like filterable resource libraries, to be API driven like headless, while the rest of the site uses blocks for complete control.

Web accessibility

Accessibility is a human right, not a checkbox. With a custom theme, you’re not relying on someone you don’t know to achieve your accessibility goals. We’ve mentioned visual design being of paramount importance, but this is equally true of accessibility issues, including visual impairment, sensitivity to motion and mobility issues. We’ll work with you to achieve WCAG 2.2 AA results.

Wrapping up

WordPress powers more than 40% of the web, and as a result there are many different ways to work with the software. We choose to create custom experiences that provide our clients with flexibility while maintaining a tightly coupled and designed experience. Your arts organization deserves a web experience that mirrors your creativity.

Ready to talk about your WordPress project?