Joomla Rocket Template - 'News Articles Old Article List'

I have a Joomla website using a rocket template 'hyperion'. [login to view URL] If you go to the website and view articles such as "agency news" 'Transformers 3' or "special feature" or the intro header 'girls on the go,' you will see that the articles do not look very good. They are very boring and plain. What I need is a module or extension (or something) to make my articles look better. Maybe there are templates to choose from or easy to use features to make them appear better and easier to write. I also want each article to have a menu list on the right hand side that displays all old articles in categories. So when a user clicks on an article they can select other articles to view from the past. Lastly I need you to explain to me how to do it. I take direction well, but I might have a few questions during the process. I have downloaded a couple modules "rokstories" and "k2" but I don't know if they are the solution and I have not been able to figure out how to use them. Maybe they are the solution, maybe not. I'm open to ideas.