Clean Simple Blog Theme

This already looks like its going to be popular.. What I like + nice photo shot + nice twitter section + nice buttons and date display (I assume the date display is dynamic) + seems quite expandable with good styling for the sidebar and footer

What might be improved - The menu in the header seems completely lost. Hard to find, hard to understand, out of place - also the text area placement in the header I dont like so much - For me there's still quite a big difference from the body and the header design - The body design appears to be of an more elegant site with that century-gothic like font, almost minimalistic design with only one color used - The header logo has a very bold font which together with the background looks more like a construction company's site to me; Also the black areas as well as the thumbnail placement make it confusing and not elegant at all - Maybe there is also a little too less contrast between the sidebar and the main content, it all looks the same so confusing. However because everything is nicely lined up that is still ok

Strong header shot, although I think the navigation gets swallowed up by it. The body of the blog doesn't seem to compliment the header graphic at all. It seems very two-tone Web 2.0 where the header is very vibrant and old world-like. At the very least I would try to match the blue elements to the same shade blue in the sky and try to implement some of the gold hues from the building into the body as well. The body shouldn't compete with the header, but try to make it part of the same composition.

Nice work. I really like it. It's clean, organized, functional. I like the treatment with the post dates. Very nice touch. I would like to see how you go about coding it for WP, as this is usually the make or break deal for most themes.

My only critique is that the navigation isn't very functional. It's rare that you find vertical main-navigation these days. This one, in my opinion, is too small and disconnected from the content. maybe try a thin bar under the header image for a horizontal style nav.