[consulting] Re : Drupal Designs

[Rick Vugteveen]

> The talk about "cloaking Drupal" is not to hide its technical
> identification, but rather the fact that most Drupal sites -- even ones
> with plenty of custom theme work done to them -- have a uniformly bland,
> geeky look to them. . What is perfectly suitable to a personal or
> community site won't work in business, where eye candy _does_ often
> matter as clients strive to distinguish themselves from their competitors.
>
> I brought a seasoned web designer -- one who has done very well for
> himself in creating some extremely eye-catching sites, and is a skilled
> Flash and Photoshop jockey -- over to the gallery of Drupal themes at
> d.o. He burst out in laughter. I think the only themes considered to be
> even near creative and competent (from a design POV) were some of the
> Andreas entries, especially the commercial stuff that's not at d.o.

I think that this is exactly what people usually mean when they don't want a
site to look like Drupal.  This is what my co-worker Chris brought up
earlier in the conversation.  At Image X Media our background is in design
first but we are also strong advocates of Drupal as a flexible platform.
Below is a sample list of some of the sites that we've designed and built
out upon drupal.  I don't think that any of you will look at them and think
that they that geeky "Drupal" look:

http://www.gardenmatters.ca
http://www.datawitness.com
http://www.fasttrackmoms.com
http://www.thewellspringfoundation.com
http://www.tuscanfarmgardens.com
http://www.favoritethings.net
http://www.discover-energy.com
http://www.mod-canvas.com

Back to the previous discussion about non-code contributions being
important, I feel that we at Image X can give back to the community by
helping Drupal get rid of the "designer unfriendly" reputation that has
unfairly dogged it.  While I agree with Chris' original statement that
making great websites using Drupal helps the platform I'm not sure that I'd
call only doing that a contribution.  I think that our contributions may
primarily take the form of posting articles and tutorials on our site and
contributing them to the Drupal handbook.  Or maybe writing a case study, or
simply making sure that contributed modules are "themable".  While such
contributions do not add a contributed module they could have an even
greater "Community ROI" effect by helping introduce design conscious themers
and developers to Drupal.

Rick Vugteveen
rick at imagexmedia.com
Web Developer
IMAGEXMEDIA.COM
Phone: 604.536.6155
"Designs that create success."
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.drupal.org/pipermail/consulting/attachments/20070323/19376ef6/attachment.htm