Any flexible customizable theme for display configuration via panels? Recently, I have been trying to design pages using panels and mini-panels. I followed some tutorial online, but the method used was a bit questionable. Since I am a newbie at this, I crashed my system beyond all repair, lol, but I managed to export valuable configuration and reload it on a fresh install. So, I am happy enough with that...

I have been playing with changing colors under Bartik, but honestly, that won't be enough...

I am looking for a flexible theme that will allows me to easily design the layout of pages from scratch using panels (most preferably). Ideally, I should be able to configure colors and fonts easily and the basic template should be simple and elegant. I want to load my own pictures to customize it (i.e., no preloaded pictures or they should be made removable).

Basically, the site is about sharing tips. Users will be able to put comments and vote for posts made by an editor. Nothing crazy.

Does anyone have a good recommendation to make for Drupal 7? Is there any such thing as a newbie-proof template? Thanks.
I still very new to the Panels module and theming in general but I have really enjoyed the Zen base theme.

I think it would have been confusing as a 'first' theme, but if you've been playing with Bartik and other common Drupal themes I think you'll love Zen.

The support, documentation and standardization surrounding the project is very impressive. 

I should note though you need to be comfortable designing with CSS.  It's very 'clean' out of the box.