[consulting] Drupal-friendly Graphic Design (new subject)

[Eric Broder]

Thanks all for the great feedback. It sounds to me like the most important
part of producing a Drupal-friendly graphic design is a dialogue between the
graphic designer and Drupal themer, as early in the design process as
possible.

Graphic design drives Drupal theming
1. Graphic designer drafts a good-looking, user-friendly design
2. Drupal themer suggests alternative design elements that are more
Drupal-friendly
3. Graphic designer revises design where appropriate

Drupal theming drives graphic design
1. Drupal themer drafts a Drupal-friendly design
2. Graphic designer suggests alternative design elements that are better
looking and more user-friendly
3. Drupal themer revises design where appropriate

Am I leaving anything out?

Thanks,
Eric

On Wed, Mar 11, 2009 at 1:52 PM, Michael Goldsmith <ixlr8 at comcast.net>wrote:

> Normally, I try to keep pretty quiet on this list, but I really have a bone
> to pick here.  You're missing a major piece of the puzzle.  There are 3
> elements that go into any kind of site:
>
> 1) What it looks like- design and theming
> 2) How it works- programming
> 3) What it's supposed to do- business rules.
>
> That third point, I feel is the most important one.  I think that we, not
> just as the Drupal community, but as programmers in general, oftentimes
> lose
> sight of that.  Most programmers focus on programming the site correctly.
> And that is definitely a very important thing, don't get me wrong.  Bad
> code
> is bad code, and is unacceptable.  But we can't forget that we not only
> have
> to program the site correctly, but that we program the correct site.  It is
> the business rules that drive the design.  It is the business rules that
> decide what the developer programs, and to an extent, how they develop as
> well.
>
> You can't blame designers for not being creative enough for you.  Necessity
> may be the mother of all invention, however, people are wired to read and
> learn in a relatively limited way.  For the most part, and there are
> exceptions to this, we read left to right, top to bottom.  The "prime" real
> estate is the upper left hand corner.  Attention radiates out from that
> corner for about the size of a logical sheet of paper.  Go beyond that, and
> you're going to lose their attention.  There's only so much you can do with
> that.  You don't want your users to have to "figure out" how to read your
> site.  You don't want your users to have to hunt down your navigation to
> get
> around your site.  People are not exactly starved for reading material.  If
> they can't intuitively figure out how to navigate your website, they'll
> just
> go somewhere else.  I've seen dozens of themes where they try to be slick
> and move the navigation around to various places on your page, and that's
> simply not going to work.  When people are forced to read in different
> manner than they are accustomed to, you lose their attention really
> quickly,
> and they go away.
>
> Now I'm not saying that sites have to be boring.  Definitely not.  A
> talented graphic designer is a talented graphic designer.  You can still
> have beautiful eye catching work that still adheres to the basic guidelines
> of how people read and learn.  But your problem with that designer was not
> with his design work, but the fact that he didn't know CSS.  Your problem
> was that your designer was also your themer.  Designers don't necessarily
> know CSS.  They know photoshop.  And that's fine.  That's what they do.
> They're designers, not themers.  I do a fair amount of theming, and I can't
> design anything in photoshop to save my life.  I've got no artistic ability
> whatsoever.  But that doesn't mean that I'm not a good themer.  It just
> means that I'm not a designer.  And that's a pretty important distinction
> to
> make.  Finding someone who can do both effectively is very rare.  Whomever
> hired that person, obviously either didn't make that distinction, or wasn't
> able to catch the designer's BS, when he was saying "oh yeah, sure, CSS...
> No problem."  And that's kind of telling too.
>
> Mike
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: consulting-bounces at drupal.org [mailto:consulting-bounces at drupal.org]
> On Behalf Of Matt Chapman
> Sent: Tuesday, March 10, 2009 6:25 PM
> To: A list for Drupal consultants and Drupal service/hosting providers
> Subject: Re: [consulting] Drupal-friendly Graphic Design (new subject)
>
>
>
> mark at markery.com wrote:
> > Is there a design that can't be done in Drupal? I always figured you
> > could do anything that you can do with standard HTML.
> >
> No, but some designs are easier than others.
>
> > Shouldn't the design drive the programming rather than the other way
> > round?
> >
> No, because of the above. If you decide how it looks before you decide
> how it works, you'll inevitably have forgotten to account for some
> feature in your design. But since you can Drupal will let you design the
> look of a feature any way you can possibly imagine, you can start with
> the features and then add design on top.
>
> The problem is, even most designers lack imagination. Once they see it
> in Garland, they can't think outside the box. I haven't figured out how
> to solve this chicken egg problem yet.
>
> But in my experience, whenever there's a problem implementing a design
> in Drupal, the weakness is in the designer/themer, and not with Drupal.
>
> I once worked with a third-party designer selected by the client who was
> used to doing static sites via Dreamweaver. I provided HTML and CSS
> templates, and all he had to do was tweak to his liking. What he
> delivered completely ignored the templates I had provided, and although
> he tried to get the client to blame Drupal, and nearly succeeded, he
> ultimately he was forced to admit that he didn't really understand how
> to use CSS. I then spent three days hacking at his Dreamweaver output to
> make it work, and re-slicing and compressing his images so that the user
> didn't need to download a full MB of background images for each page.
>
> A nice portfolio does not a web designer make... :-(
>
> -Matt
>
>
>
>
>
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-- 
Eric Broder
Director, Green Oak Web Design
greenoakwebdesign.com
510.410.8158
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