After having a look around the features of the theme I had originally chosen I found that it wasn't very customisable in terms of visuals without paying for an upgrade to the full version. As the original template is very far from the style I want to use that proved to be a huge problem. After looking around a bit longer I found a theme called Hueman which suits what I'm after fairly well. Its a fully featured, free theme with a very basic palette which can be changed in many ways. Its also supports columns for news and social feeds right out of the box which saves a lot of time.
