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

[George D. DeMet]

I think the biggest difference here is that Young is speaking from the 
perspective of an in-house designer at a Drupal development shop, and 
isn't dealing with the same realities as those of us who frequently work 
with creative partners and clients who may or may not already be 
familiar with the software. 

While it may be fine to use those terms in-house, telling a client or 
creative partner that the design concepts they've spent so much time, 
thought, and money developing are full of "errors" or "mistakes" would 
be catastrophic from a client relationship perspective and changing some 
elements just to be more "Drupal-friendly" would in some cases 
fundamentally undermine the branding and/or identity of the project. 

When possible, we try to work closely with the client and/or creative 
partner starting as early in the design process as possible so that we 
can identify sooner rather than later which elements will be 
particularly time-consuming to implement.  What we often do in these 
cases is provide two estimates: one for how long it will take to 
implement the element as designed, and one for how long it will take to 
implement if the design or functionality is tweaked to be more 
"Drupal-friendly".  Then it's up to the client to decide which approach 
they want to take given the constraints of their budget and timeline. 

As I've mentioned here before, education is vital to this process, not 
just for developers to help designers understand what can most easily be 
achieved using Drupal (or any CMS), but also for designers to help 
developers understand how and why good design is so important to the 
success of many projects, and why something that may look "just as good" 
to you or me actually isn't in many cases.

There was a lot of talk about this at Drupalcon DC, and the good news is 
that I think we're finally starting to see the designers and themers 
within the community get together and speak out about what tools Drupal 
could provide to more easily accommodate sophisticated designs.

Nicolas Borda wrote:
>
> On 10 Mar 2009, at 19:42, Eric Broder wrote:
>
>> So far I detect one main idea coming through: advise the graphic 
>> designer on what default "out of the box" implementations look like, 
>> possibly by building a prototype first and then telling the graphic 
>> designer to use it as an architectural outline.
>>
>> Are there other methods you might suggest? Is it helpful to give a 
>> graphic designer a list of readily available variables to play around 
>> with? Or to present a choice of basic layout structures that are easy 
>> to implement in Drupal?
>
>
> I would suggest reading this great article
> by Young Hahn:
>
> http://www.developmentseed.org/blog/2009/mar/01/limitations-drupal-theme-layer 
>
> (http://tinyurl.com/bvhwat)
>
> In this article he point out three common
> "mistakes" designers make when designing
> Drupal themes:
>
> 1. Moving something out of its vertical stack.
> 2. Changing the formatting of a core element.
> 3. Expecting visual consistency across different modules.
>
> I think he makes very valid point in this
> article. I used to tell designers to make
> any design they want and I would be able
> to theme it, and use to design myself with
> that principle. I have learned that although
> most things can be done, like Young says
> some things can be hard to do, hard to
> maintain, and can be done with Drupal
> friendly alternatives. Is it really in your client's
> best interest having things in the design that
> will be costly, when you can provide
> alternatives that will look just as good and
> be less expensive to theme. I guess it also
> depend on the budget and the brief for the
> project.
>
>
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>

-- 
George D. DeMet
Palantir.net
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Chicago IL 60614
p 773.645.4100 x306
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