2013 Design for Drupal, Boston

That is so great to hear. We plan on continuing to add general design sessions to D4D next year. As our session organizer Dani Nordin said, our event is about web design with a focus on Drupal as the software. Not an exact quote but you see what I mean.

Hey Amy,

I think your comment is right on, with regards to synthesizing knowledge all the way from design to systems management.

But, I was really struck this year by the quality of the presentations at D4D. By having a separate conference, that is focused on design, but invites developers to present, you get to some really great discussions that I don't think DrupalCon hits. Or at least maybe the conversation get lost because there is so much going on.

When the conference is focused on design, you get developers thinking about and sharing how the technology we are using can affect design. You also get us listening to what we need to think about.

I personally think Design, especially UX is entering it's hey day. How we design web and mobile experiences is finally getting the attention it deserves and is penetrating everything we think about in the systems we build. As such, I think conferences like D4D are right on and I suspect are really going to grow!

One thought might be to put on a D4D day at Druplicon. Or a track? Somehow a track seems to lose some focus for me personally, but that may just be me.

Hi Amy, there's design / UX tracks at Drupalcon & most Drupalcamps. sometimes they're calling it Frontend, but there should be Design sessions.

There's always lots of topics to cover at these events so unfortunately there's competition for the same slots. Having a separate design conference allows more speakers and more concentration on the design element.

Thanks for the compliment- I am glad to be able to inspire in such a tangible way.

Considering that getting the sense of grey is somewhat the harder task, I applaud your efforts. Here is something that may help you in the learning phase:

When you are looking at the greys, start by trying to guess the value (light/dark). Then try to guess whether that particular grey is warm/cool. (Warm=red, cool=blue)

Remember that the green channel adds warmth to colours as it contains yellow.

As you learn to see the relative lightness and warmth (or their absence) in the grey hues, you can start to transfer that awareness to the other colours.
Just be patient- it does take practice.

If you really want something to play with on a summer afternoon. Go out and buy some cheap acrylic paints. Only Red, Blue and Green. Also get yourself a wax-paper palette with at least 10 sheets, and a palette knife, NOT A BRUSH.

Find yourself a table, preferably outside but in shade. (Bright sunlight will wash out the intensity of your colours making them harder to see.

Make a small pool of each pure hue along one edge of your palette paper.
Using the knife, see what happens as you work your way through mixing small samples of combined colours. Notice what amount of red it takes to overwhelm a certain amount of blue, or green. What kind of colour results? Start by mixing only two hues, then try three, then try mixing two of the new ones that you have created. As you get the hang of it- find something in your line of sight to try to match the colour of. Mix the colours you have available to you until you get exactly the same hue as your object. I find it helpful to make 2"x6" strips of heavy paper and then I smear a good solid patch on one end of the colour I have created. This way I can hold the paper up and put it in my line of sight with the object I'm trying to match.

This colour mixing exercise is what most painters go through when they begin to work in oil paints for a given canvas. if they are painting from life they recognize that it takes some work before they can just set brush to canvas and know that they have the "right" colours. When you see the words "colourstudy" on a small, probably unfinished looking piece at a museum or gallery- this is what you are looking at. Colour-studies are the preliminary messing about with colours that a painter does to understand what the right colours need to be and how to mix them.

Enjoy!
Amy

Doren,
You touched upon an excellent point. I'm active here in the DC Web community, and have gotten similar misconceptions from top-level designers here, feeling that Drupal doesn't appeal to creatives. Ironically, enough do projects in WordPress that require custom coding (most shops have in-house devs for this) that could be done with off-the-shelf modules in Drupal.

I came into Drupal from a designer perspective, and so can understand some of the apprehensiveness of creatives. It helped that I had some background experience in PHP, but there still was a bit of a learning curve. Once the hard part had passed (pulling a few all-nighters on my first projects helped there), things got noticeably easier.

Unfortunately, I have perceived a bit of a gulf between "designers" and "developers" on larger projects. To be truly successful, those barriers need to be broken down so that true collaboration can develop.

P.S.
I couldn't make this year's conference due to a schedule conflict, but am planning to make next year's event.