Layout and styling ideas

I am totally happy with Grav and am using it for almost a dozen domains already.

I ususally like to stick with the default theme (at the moment "Quark") and try to achieve everything I want without changing the theme.

The downside of this approach is - obviously - that all sites do look very similar. I am trying to tweak this and that with inline HTML and some simple twig stuff, but I wondered, whether people tweak the default theme to achieve interesting layouts and effects.

Some of you might remember the site "CSS Zen Garden", where people showed off, what they achieved by just styling the plain HTML - i wish such a source of inspiration would exist for Grav.

Don't get me wrong: There are plenty of interesting themes - but it is a bit cumbersome to test them in order to see, how my site would look like (not mentioning the adjustments, you might need to make, in order to make it work).

As I am writing, this brings me to an idea for the future: Wouldn't it be cool, if certain effects, stylings, layouts etc (controllable by markdown or other simple means) would be available as plugins? 🤔

Anyway: If you have had cool ideas of how to twea the default theme "inline", please feel free to share your outcome! 😉

Have you looked at Gantry 5?

Sorry, I must have expressed my point badly: I am not looking for new themes or frameworks, I would just love to see a showcase of what people got out of the default theme by styling it rather than by changing it.

I like tweaking existing standards rather than trying out many themes. And I would like to give the sites different looks by just configuring and styling the default theme.

Hello and welcome @Vince42 .
I would suggest that every time you do a website, check if there is a skeleton that approaches in some way your design, then you can extend the theme that skeleton uses, extending the theme with modified twig templates and a custom style sheets to meet your needs .

REFERENCES:
Skeletons: https://getgrav.org/downloads/skeletons
Themes: https://learn.getgrav.org/17/themes/theme-basics
Theme Tutorial: https://learn.getgrav.org/17/themes/theme-tutorial

Hope this can help,
Best regards

@Vince42:
There are plenty of interesting themes - but it is a bit cumbersome to test them in order to see, how my site would look like (not mentioning the adjustments, you might need to make, in order to make it work).

Yes. That's the reason why - depending on the projects needs and size - I prefer to create everything from scratch regarding themes. This has been the correct approach for almost every webproject I have done in recent years. The cms was different, but I think using grav instead will lead to the same point. Currently I am diving into grav and how to set it up from scratch. The downside is - of course - more work. On the other hand, you develop what you need in your own style, you know every screw and how to rotate it - so maintaining the site is much easier and more flexible.