>>5430101A good launcher helps, I use Nova, Apex is also popular. UCCW is the best widget app around, takes a bit to get into building from scratch, but the play store has a ton of premade widgets you can use with it. Zooper Widgets are good too. Here's a site that will walk you through a few themes so you can get an idea of how it works.
http://themeyourdroid.blogspot.ca/2013/07/pullin-out-clean-functional-uccw.html?m=1 also this site for insperation and some tutorials
http://mycolorscreen.com/ ask if you have specific questions
