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

[Matt Chapman]

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