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.<br>
<br>Graphic design drives Drupal theming<br>1. Graphic designer drafts a good-looking, user-friendly design<br>2. Drupal themer suggests alternative design elements that are more Drupal-friendly<br>3. Graphic designer revises design where appropriate<br>
<br>Drupal theming drives graphic design<br>1. Drupal themer drafts a Drupal-friendly design<br>2. Graphic designer suggests alternative design elements that are better looking and more user-friendly<br>3. Drupal themer revises design where appropriate<br>
<br>Am I leaving anything out?<br><br>Thanks,<br>Eric<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Mar 11, 2009 at 1:52 PM, Michael Goldsmith <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:ixlr8@comcast.net">ixlr8@comcast.net</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">Normally, I try to keep pretty quiet on this list, but I really have a bone<br>
to pick here. You're missing a major piece of the puzzle. There are 3<br>
elements that go into any kind of site:<br>
<br>
1) What it looks like- design and theming<br>
2) How it works- programming<br>
3) What it's supposed to do- business rules.<br>
<br>
That third point, I feel is the most important one. I think that we, not<br>
just as the Drupal community, but as programmers in general, oftentimes lose<br>
sight of that. Most programmers focus on programming the site correctly.<br>
And that is definitely a very important thing, don't get me wrong. Bad code<br>
is bad code, and is unacceptable. But we can't forget that we not only have<br>
to program the site correctly, but that we program the correct site. It is<br>
the business rules that drive the design. It is the business rules that<br>
decide what the developer programs, and to an extent, how they develop as<br>
well.<br>
<br>
You can't blame designers for not being creative enough for you. Necessity<br>
may be the mother of all invention, however, people are wired to read and<br>
learn in a relatively limited way. For the most part, and there are<br>
exceptions to this, we read left to right, top to bottom. The "prime" real<br>
estate is the upper left hand corner. Attention radiates out from that<br>
corner for about the size of a logical sheet of paper. Go beyond that, and<br>
you're going to lose their attention. There's only so much you can do with<br>
that. You don't want your users to have to "figure out" how to read your<br>
site. You don't want your users to have to hunt down your navigation to get<br>
around your site. People are not exactly starved for reading material. If<br>
they can't intuitively figure out how to navigate your website, they'll just<br>
go somewhere else. I've seen dozens of themes where they try to be slick<br>
and move the navigation around to various places on your page, and that's<br>
simply not going to work. When people are forced to read in different<br>
manner than they are accustomed to, you lose their attention really quickly,<br>
and they go away.<br>
<br>
Now I'm not saying that sites have to be boring. Definitely not. A<br>
talented graphic designer is a talented graphic designer. You can still<br>
have beautiful eye catching work that still adheres to the basic guidelines<br>
of how people read and learn. But your problem with that designer was not<br>
with his design work, but the fact that he didn't know CSS. Your problem<br>
was that your designer was also your themer. Designers don't necessarily<br>
know CSS. They know photoshop. And that's fine. That's what they do.<br>
They're designers, not themers. I do a fair amount of theming, and I can't<br>
design anything in photoshop to save my life. I've got no artistic ability<br>
whatsoever. But that doesn't mean that I'm not a good themer. It just<br>
means that I'm not a designer. And that's a pretty important distinction to<br>
make. Finding someone who can do both effectively is very rare. Whomever<br>
hired that person, obviously either didn't make that distinction, or wasn't<br>
able to catch the designer's BS, when he was saying "oh yeah, sure, CSS...<br>
No problem." And that's kind of telling too.<br>
<br>
Mike<br>
<div class="im"><br>
-----Original Message-----<br>
From: <a href="mailto:consulting-bounces@drupal.org">consulting-bounces@drupal.org</a> [mailto:<a href="mailto:consulting-bounces@drupal.org">consulting-bounces@drupal.org</a>]<br>
On Behalf Of Matt Chapman<br>
Sent: Tuesday, March 10, 2009 6:25 PM<br>
To: A list for Drupal consultants and Drupal service/hosting providers<br>
</div><div class="im">Subject: Re: [consulting] Drupal-friendly Graphic Design (new subject)<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
</div><div><div></div><div class="h5"><a href="mailto:mark@markery.com">mark@markery.com</a> wrote:<br>
> Is there a design that can't be done in Drupal? I always figured you<br>
> could do anything that you can do with standard HTML.<br>
><br>
No, but some designs are easier than others.<br>
<br>
> Shouldn't the design drive the programming rather than the other way<br>
> round?<br>
><br>
No, because of the above. If you decide how it looks before you decide<br>
how it works, you'll inevitably have forgotten to account for some<br>
feature in your design. But since you can Drupal will let you design the<br>
look of a feature any way you can possibly imagine, you can start with<br>
the features and then add design on top.<br>
<br>
The problem is, even most designers lack imagination. Once they see it<br>
in Garland, they can't think outside the box. I haven't figured out how<br>
to solve this chicken egg problem yet.<br>
<br>
But in my experience, whenever there's a problem implementing a design<br>
in Drupal, the weakness is in the designer/themer, and not with Drupal.<br>
<br>
I once worked with a third-party designer selected by the client who was<br>
used to doing static sites via Dreamweaver. I provided HTML and CSS<br>
templates, and all he had to do was tweak to his liking. What he<br>
delivered completely ignored the templates I had provided, and although<br>
he tried to get the client to blame Drupal, and nearly succeeded, he<br>
ultimately he was forced to admit that he didn't really understand how<br>
to use CSS. I then spent three days hacking at his Dreamweaver output to<br>
make it work, and re-slicing and compressing his images so that the user<br>
didn't need to download a full MB of background images for each page.<br>
<br>
A nice portfolio does not a web designer make... :-(<br>
<br>
-Matt<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
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</div></div></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Eric Broder<br>Director, Green Oak Web Design<br><a href="http://greenoakwebdesign.com">greenoakwebdesign.com</a><br>510.410.8158<br>