Differences between this group and the theme group

Posted by jeffomac on July 29, 2006 at 3:44am

Hey group...
I got home from walking my two dogs this evening and found the last two posts on our board... one by Ber and the other by Moshe.

If you're subscribing to Drupal Designers, you'll have already seen those.

So, I wanted to post a follow up to this idea that the Theme group and the Designers group are overlapping... I don't think that is the case at all.

Been designing for over 10 years...

First off, let me say that I'm new to drupal (and loving it) but I'm not at all new to web design or design period... I've been in this game for over 10 years now... Seen a lot of stuff come and go... I've been working in Photoshop since version 2... and I taught myself Perl back before PHP was even imagined. (of course now I do PHP as well though) :)
I've used many CMS, and I've concluded that drupal is the best.
It's such a breath of fresh air!

Want to give back to the community... and help with improving drupal *Designs

So naturally, I'm really excited to be a part of this community. Especially, since most of the talk I've been hearing lately is how the community is interested in improving the themes and making sites that "don't look like drupal" (the way they put it)... I'm sure you've heard that.
So, as a designer... I thought... "Hey, this is one way I can contribute back to this community... to help with the design part of it."

Joined the drupal groups and looked for a Design group

So, I heard about the groups.drupal.org site on the lullabot podcast with Jeff Robbins... It was the interview with Moshe, when I heard about it.
I came right over here and joined.

I immediately looked for a group to join that was talking about design... And I couldn't find any. From a designers point of view, those discussions about the functions (in the Theme group) weren't very interesting to me.

I joined the Theme group... But when I read this I kind of got less interested in the Theme group.

The web is not made to be pretty (HTML is never designed as a layout language).

So, conclusion: «Get Real».

If you want pretty stuff, use Flash or some other layout system. Offer PDFs, or DVDs for download.
If you want a website, forget the prettyness, and focus on the accessability, structure, content and all that, and less on the layout.

I had the wrong idea about the purpose of the Theme group

At first I thought the theme group was there to talk about design... but when I read that I figured there was some other agenda going on there.

You know, there are millions of sites out there that look like blogs.
Aren't you guys tired of that look?! How many CMS's can we have in this world with the left column, center and right column... I agree with Ber when he says that this is a very restricting layout system.

But I disagree with the idea that you shouldn't start with the design... with the photoshop PSD file.
The Design should always come first for the designer.

Conclution...

Moshe... I totally understand that you feel the need to do away with anything that is overlapping... but honestly... the discussions over on the Theme group are more concentrated on functions and code than on layout and real design. I'll be happy to do whatever needs to be done to keep the groups site consolidated... but if I get blasted for saying that I use tables to take care of a sliced image or that I think Flash looks cool (even if it's not accessible)... If I can't say stuff like that on this site without being scourned... :) I probably won't stick around. And even tho there's a lot of Theme group subscribers, there's really not a whole lot of activity there from what I can see.

I think the direction of the Designers group is pretty obvious by our posts... we're sharing tips on Design period... and the common thread we all share is that we use Drupal to make those Designs a reality. Believe me, I could talk about code with any one of you guys backwards and forwards all day long... but, there are two parts to this puzzle... the code and the design... and for me, Design comes first... But from what I understand about the Theme group... the code comes first.
What we all know about code though... is that it keeps changing doesn't it... next year there will be a whole new list of standards to meet... I can't get that caught up in all those semantics... I just want my visitors to be absolutely blown away by the Design that they are speechless... maybe I'll get there one of these days.

I hope this clarifies where I'm coming from.
-Jeff

Comments

thanks

Posted by moshe weitzman on July 29, 2006 at 4:10am

a very thoughtful post. nice formatting, too :).

not only is there a place for designers in the drupal project, there is a big trophy for y'all. much appreciated.

i will expand a bit about policies on this site. we are always discussing drupal. you would be surprised how many random groups set up shop here, with minimal connection to drupal.

so, a group about theme development is just fine. a group about pure design is not. and i think the closer the design group moves to "design in drupal", the more overlap there is.

i really hope you stick with our project. we need more clear minds like yours.

Moshe, I have to disagree

Posted by Nick Lewis on July 29, 2006 at 7:42am

Moshe, I have to disagree with this point -- perhaps even strongly.

Theming is a technical challenge -- it is the art of molding drupal CODE to fit a DESIGN. Design is a whole different ballgame. I think we'll both agree that

I beg you to take a quick look at the contributed themes in the CVS. Do you use any of them? Yeah... neither do I.

Theming != design. Design is a HUGE subject. Drupal could benefit astronomically from the contributions of experienced designers (Did you notice that I said designer, not themer?)

Even if the quality of info here does not yet reach our high standards of excellence and quality, i think nevertheless, we need to let this group incubate. Why kill it? Seriously, what do we gain? And remember:

WE HAVE A KICK ASS THEME SYSTEM, AND NOT ONE THEME THAT IS BEAUTIFUL (imho).

Come on... let this stay.

"I'm not concerned about all hell breaking loose, but that a PART of hell will break loose... it'll be much harder to detect." - George Carlin

http://www.nicklewis.org

"We are all worms. But I believe that I am a glow-worm." - Winston Churchill
work: http://www.chapterthree.com
blog: http://www.nicklewis.org

Weighing in on differences

Posted by miriam on August 4, 2006 at 7:09pm

Hey all,

I think there is a desperate need in the drupal community make space for the people (usually designers and usability folks) who manage the look/feel and user experience side of things. This is even more true as Drupal extends its functionality and offers great modules like Views and CCK. I agree that the theme developers OG sounded way to much like a coder conversation and not a designer conversation.

Moshe I disagree that there is no space for design and UI in general on Drupal OG. If we don't start discussing design for drupal in general and in strategic terms, than the admin interface for the CMS will continue to stupify non -techies and theming will continue to be an excercise in prettifying container divs and trying to grab UL tags out from under the Drupal.css files nose, rather than an opportunity to craft really usable websites out of the amazing and robust CMS that is Drupal;

I think there are several diverse needs within the larger design category and the five groups that presently exist could be rolled into one big group and subscribers can pick and choose between subgroups.

For example;

design:

Theming engines and functions
Usability (Drupal admin interface and site design included within)
Customizing site views (cck /views/site design)
Designing a your first drupal site (Tips for designers who are not used to designing for a dynamic site engine)
Tips tricks and best practises (General design advice for drupal themers)

and just IMHO: I think the major needs as far as design discussion at present are;

A better way to integrate seperate theming for front-end and admin areas. ( ie when you pick your them you can pick one for admin and one for site display, and you can set your admin to include or not include the various content entry forms)
Creating clear and simple documentation about the working relationship between site design/site structure/cck/views.

That's my two cents,

best,
miriam

One Group Would Be Helpful

Posted by betsy on August 19, 2006 at 12:12am

I agree with Miriam that one big design-focused group would be helpful. I'm new to Drupal, but not new to content management systems, and I have been designing Web sites for 10 years. The Drupal community appears to need a cohesive group dedicated to the central best practices concepts for Web design, including table-free CSS layouts, usability, information architecture and accessibility.

I'm here because I think Drupal and CivicSpace are the platforms I'll be needing for my projects, and it was a hard sell to get me away from the nice Joomla designs that caught my eye initially. But, I need Drupal's community-building, social-networking features. I have had to work my way around the Groups and subscribe to a multitude of similarly-focused forums.

The thing is, if you're doing it right, you can have amazing designs that are also usable, accessible and compliant. To me, there isn't any split on these topics, and you can't focus on one without the other.

Betsy

I agree on everything, almost :)

Posted by rickvug on August 19, 2006 at 1:47am

Miriam, on 90% of your points I agree with you. The community does need to stick together and not split up into a million subgroups. In general, I think that all of the sub-groups that you mentioned except for "usability" and "Theming engines and functions" fit under this group perfectly fine. "Theming engines and functions" would be focused on improving drupal's capabilities by developing phpTemplate and other template systems. In my mind, this fits under the "Theme Development" group that is already established. The mission of the group is already "to improve and expand the Drupal theme system". Usability discussion is part of the usability group that already exists.

In my opinion, there is already some clear distinctions between these groups. There will be overlap sometimes, which is fine. You can post a message in more than one if applicable. One of the good things about having this designer focused group is that most designers aren't too interested in the current CVS developments. They want help and tips on how to use drupal, not develop drupal.

I have admin status at this group and will post soon to solicit users to help create a shared vision for this group. I wish I could help now but its Friday night. Thank you for your thoughts, please feel free to keep them coming!

Rick

Agreeing

Posted by sun on October 4, 2006 at 11:11pm

+1 for miriam's post

@rickvug: I think, miriam meant "Usage of Theming engines and functions in Drupal" (that is very different from developing them) and "User Experience" (dealing with visual presentation having underlying usability).

Overall, Drupal badly needs visual polishing. I also agree to Nick's comment about beautiful themes. Drupal 5.0 will make every designer's life easier, but designers need definitely a channel for discussions.

Daniel F. Kudwien
unleashed mind

Daniel F. Kudwien
netzstrategen

First I wondered, too

Posted by narres on July 29, 2006 at 11:06am

that there is another "OG", which is called "Drupal designers" and thought: "Isn't that the same as "Theme development"?".

Now we are having 5 very design related OG's here:
- Accessibility
- Drupal Designers
- Theme competition administration
- Theme development
- Usability

But I think the difference between "Theme development" and "Drupal designers" is that:
Theme development: Is very Drupal close
Drupal designers: Is more llose to Drupal coding, but more close to general webdesign

So, it makes sense.

Ideally there would be a possiblility to build a hierarchy of OG's ;)

To Moshe, Ber and Jeff...

Posted by rickvug on July 31, 2006 at 12:12am

I myself wanted to create a design group such as this awhile back and emailed Adrian about it, as I did not want to create an overlapping group (I never did hear back). My reasoning is that there should be two groups: theme development and theme design. Here is what I envision the differences to be:

Theme Development:

Development of PHPTemplate or other theme systems
Focus on code, systems and technical aspects of Drupal
User profile: Drupal developer, solid knowledge of PHP and programing
Sample Posts: "Theme components as nodes", "themefunctions calling themefunctions calling theme functions (calling Drupal apis) calling theme functions"

Theme Design:

Focus on real world use of phptemplate and Drupal to create beautiful sites
Focus is on design first, although code is definitely critical to this
User profile: Primarily a designer, knows CSS a lot better than PHP
(Possible) Sample Posts: "How do I make a form look great?", "How to utilize Drupal's block system", "From PSD to functioning site"

In my mind a group such as this, if constructed and used properly, would be boon to the project as high quality Drupal designers are much needed. There needs to be a push to make Drupal easy to use and design for. Just look at Wordpress' success at doing so as an example.

Future Direction

If this group is to be helpful and co-exist with the theme development group, here is what I propose:

Rename this group to something more descriptive, maybe "Drupal for Theme Designers", "Theming Drupal", "Drupal Themers and Designers", "Theme Designers", "Drupal Themers" ... I'm running a loss as to what the best name would be.
Clarify the differences between this group and the theme development group. Both groups should have clear descriptions that outline their intended focus.
Both groups should have a link at the end of their description pointing to the other. For example, this group may have an ending sentence such as "For discussion about the development and expansion of Drupal's theme system please see the Theme Development group. The Theme Development group may say "For discussion of design implementation and creating themes with Drupal please visit the Drupal Themers group."
While the focus of the two groups will be different there will still be some overlap, which is fine in by me. The overlap should be systematic and limited to the 25% of posts that might interest both groups. The same thing happens across other groups and works great.
Discussion here should relate to Drupal at almost all times. A post just about Flash might be frowned upon, while a post about correctly using Flash in Drupal would be perfectly fine.
jeffofmac has put a lot of effort into this group, which is appreciated. However, thus far most posts have been made by himself, turning the group into more of a blog. More participation and the growing of a healthy group should be actively encouraged.

I hope that these points can help guide this group. Feedback is encouraged, whether on this thread or in private. Also, I am open to help mold and organize this group if this is fine by other parties. I work for a design company Image X Media where my primary job is to convert Photoshop designs into functioning Drupal sites. My background is in Web Standards compliant HTML and CSS based design and I have only begun picking up PHP viamy work with Drupal. My profile is nearly identical to this group's target audience and I know that the folks at Image X wouldn't mind being a stakeholder in this group, as it lines up with their business interests. Maybe the folks at Lullabot, Bryght and other business' want to speak up as well?

related to ...Weighing in on differences

Posted by Wolfflow on February 18, 2008 at 6:23am

Hi Miriam and hello Group,

I'm a newby even member to Drupal.org almost a year. I found your point o view really clear and and easy to understand. Well If it
toke me more then one year to orient myself on all the posted information of how to implement Drupal and Themes is also because
it's very frustrating as for all non english speaking person like me to understand and apply the huge ammount of information present
on the different Drupal Sites. Of course i'm not going to stop posting for Drupal and try to find the right way to step in and contribute
to this fantastic CMS world that Drupal allow to implement even if we are all non confident in PhP programming.

With Drupal 6 we got another development stage that is really helping people like me that really are waiting to be followed and helped
in order to contribute with new Ideas and maybe solution how to meke everything even easier for developing efficient modules, beautiful Themes and spread the geniality of Drupal.

Cheers
Wolfflow