Your WordPress blog doesn’t have to look like everyone else’s. You can customize it to suit your particular audience and your particular preferences. One theme that you might want to consider is Ribbons Free.

The layout is robust, yet simple and clean enough to offer a positive user experience. Using the jQuery Cycle Plugin, you get to feature a series of posts toward the top of the page. Visitors can cycle through them with the previous and next buttons just below that.

Underneath that, you find the usual reverse chronological blog orientation, but the theme has been preconfigured to show a thumbnail image and an excerpt. This way, the design is consistent and clean. There’s also a 468×60 banner next to the header, as well as integration with social media via the buttons toward the top-right.

Make your way over to WP Explorer to check out the live preview of Ribbons Free. The link for the free download can be found on the same page, as Ribbons Free is distributed with a GPL license.