We need a theme contest. It's been talked about many times over the past few years. I give you the previous attempts...
http://drupal.org/node/17876, http://drupal.org/node/25312, http://drupal.org/node/55460, http://drupal.org/node/6247#comment-9358
I think these attempts have failed due to lack of funding, support and clear organization. I want to get the ball rolling on this. Please reply with your ideas and comments. Here are my ideas I'm tossing around.
Goals
- Get more beautiful themes into Drupal
- Get the designer community involved
- Showcase Drupal theming done right
- Increase awareness of Drupal
Carrots
- We need a cash/prize system. A big one, like $1-5k. We need to get a hybrid tip jar/sponsorship fund going. The tip jars for code sprints did it, we can too.
- Winning designs will be awarded cash prizes. Other possible prizes, ticket to DrupalCon Paris, learning materials, CS4, computer equipment, etc.
- Have multiple categories. (Best Clean & Simple, Best looking overall, Most Web 2.0, Best look-alike, Cutest, etc., Nominate your category here)
- Low barrier of entry. Being able to code the design into a theme is not a prerequisite. We can pair you with themers and you split the prize however you see fit.
- Interview the winners, take their photos, etc., acknowledge them for the hard work. Showcase the designs on d.o homepage, with links to download the themes!
Rules
- Must adhere to design criteria. Must be workable on a base install of Drupal 6/7's modules but must also work for CCK/Views/Panels.
- Must be a new design. The design must not be used currently or in the past on a website.
- Design one homepage and one internal page mockup.
- The themes are for the benefit of all. No sponsored blogs/template sites/off-site nonsense. The design and theme is GPL'd code and in d.o CVS.
- Anyone can sign up. Any group of people can work together on a design, but only one prize is awarded per design.
- We need an independent website much like DrupalCon and drupalusability.org were made.
- Designs will be uploaded and blind voted on an independent custom Drupal website. I think we need a small group of select, seasoned graphic designers and Drupal designers to publicly critique uploaded designs ala American idol. We get the benefit of the professional's eye but get the voting power of the public.
- Provide the design in a layered Photoshop PSD, Fireworks, or GIMP file format.
- Announce winners at DrupalCon Paris? A couple days before, announce three finalists for each category to create some suspense/tension.
Time frame
- Have the contest site built by July
- Announce July/August. Have a d.o announcement lead time of 2 weeks to get the word out. Then get the word out on Digg/Reddit/blogs/template sites, etc.
- Conduct contest in August. Have like 2-3 weeks for competition with a hard deadline.
- Completed by early September.
Steps
- Solicit more ideas & input on proposal on g.d.o. Gauge interest in community.
- Get a design fund going. See if Drupal Association and the Drupal companies want to sponsor.
- Assign people to help in organizing/judging/implementation/coding. I'm willing to donate my time to push this forward.
- Design and build the theming contest site on Drupal. Get volunteers involved.
If this gets traction, I'll repost this on a g.d.o Wiki page.
Our Inspiration
Drupal 6 theming is mature. This isn't the days of Drupal 4.5 code. We have the technology. We don't need to settle for mediocre design. Fellow Drupalers and designers - we have the talent and the will to do this. We can do better and we will do better! Now is the time! Let's make it happen!
Comments
I'm soliciting companies for
I'm soliciting companies for implementation and funding. I hope to have more to post here shortly.
Our strong position is that
Our strong position is that it would be better to have a design competition that is for sites that are already out in the wild. This would be a showcase competition that wouldn't necessarily showcase designs or themes that would be contributed back to the Drupal project pages but would, in fact, recognize themers' work in action:
This type of "competition" would not only showcase designs and themers but Drupal sites in general.
ARRGHHH!
Design Contests are terrible.
The DrupalCon DC T-shirt design contest resulted in the most mediocre design being produced. If you want to get better themes in Drupal find some designers whose work you like and PAY THEM TO PRODUCE THEMES. Let them know that if they accept the job, their theme will have their name attached so they will have an incentive to do their very best.
I firmly believe that Themes and contrib modules should be handled as freeware with people being encouraged to donate a few dollars to the creator, with the Association getting a part of that.
Nothing motivates people to do great work more than the appreciation of others, especially when that appreciation is financial. That motivation pays off with everyone having more assets to work with, especially the "consumer"
It all depends on the
It all depends on the submissions. Don't dismiss designers for not having enough talent. A lot of the t-shirt designs look pretty nice to me. In this case, this contest is for web designers. I think turn out would be better than you expect. Likewise, there's a competitive aspect in the contest. There's plenty of good will, competition AND funding (I hope) to go around.
Branding/associating the theme to the designer/themer/company is good practice. As I proposed, the themes would be GPL'd and on d.o
The designers have plenty of talent.
In my opinion there were many really good designs that were basically thrown away in the T-shirt design contest. A waste of time for many TALENTED folks.
I am ETHICALLY opposed to design contests in which designers are asked to perform work where their chance of getting compensation is minimal. It is abusive to artists and designers whose entire careers are "design contests" and it promotes the stereotype that a designers time and effort is not worth money or is worth no more than a lottery ticket.
ETHICALLY i believe it is a bad idea for Drupal Association, an open source community, to endorse this practice. And I will speak out against it every chance I get.
Go ahead and seek funding. I am suggesting it would be better spent on a portfolio review that results in offering new talent an opportunity to have their theme featured on d.o. and get paid SOMETHING for it than to engage in a practice that abuses just about everyone who participates.
I'm still on vacation so I
I'm still on vacation so I can't really address this yet, but this was one of my crusades when the Drupal Association first started going. I didn't get it through 2 years ago, but we're in the budgetting process again and when I return from the wilds of Maryland I intend to submit a budget request and get some money to actually do this.
I will note:
In my opinion, the primary purpose a theme contest is less to get new themes but more to get new designers, to get them interested in Drupal, give them an incentive to learn the skills, and show them that there is a job market for people with Drupal + design skills. They can use the showcase the contest will provide as a way to demonstrate what they could do, even as a beginner.
As a side effect we should get some new themes.
There are some issues with language and such that will need to be addressed before we can move forward, and ultimately we may not call it a contest at all, but we shall see.
I'll write up something better after I've been home for a few days and chatted with some of the high profile design folks, so look for more in a couple of weeks.
Grants will accomplish these goals too.
I'm all for giving new talent opportunity while getting new themes and new designers on board.
Please consider having people apply for grants, and if a review of their work warrants it, offer them a grant (however small) to create a new theme.
It is the "do all the work first" part of the contest I do not like. A grant based on the merit shown by one's previous work is fair to the artist, while encouraging competition and excellence. I beleive such a plan will result in new themes while encouraging a sense of community instead of damaging it.
For those of you who noticed this shirt for sale at the conference by the person who designed it: http://dc2009.drupalcon.org/t-shirt/dc-takeover-please-view-high-rez might understand better.
By coming in third, I don't know that ngreenup received anything for his effort. Yet I saw plenty of people buy and and wear his shirt. Themes, unlike shirts are exactly the opposite in terms of labor vs access. We choose one T-shirt because they are not too terribly consuming to design and expensive to reproduce where themes are just the opposite.
You have a sponsor and more..
We're already doing this on a small scale, and this is what's helped create www.bestbabystuff.co.uk and others.
I'm very happy to throw - drupal theming resource - ie they do designs in psd, etc.. and we'll convert to compliant 6 themes.
I have team very experienced at this, and we're also looking to pay good designers to do drupal themes.
There is a real gap between what you can do in drupal and wordpress/joomla not because of the engineering - drupal is amazing, but because there is a usability gap.
We showed a client site recently to a top drupal company and were told it would cost £100k.., we did for £1000 and still made a profit..
This would also fit in really well with what we're working on for www.TheSimpleIdea.com and www.OpenSourceMadeEasy.com and the launch we plan for the UK drupal camp in the summer. (if you haven't seen it.. you can read the full proposal here - http://groups.drupal.org/node/19479
I think all of your points
@merlinofchaos I think all of your points are well put. I think with a contest, you get all that and more. I think calling it a contest is necessary to get the competitive spirit going. Big cash prizes and giveaways are great motivators too. If you're idea is to do a GHOP like thing, I'm against that. Looking back at the few designs that were submitted through GHOP, I wouldn't call that a success. The cash awards weren't great either. The GHOP site isn't going to make a designer excited and load up Photoshop.
We need a site that is exciting, an inspiration to designers and have a clear mission. If you look at the DrupalCon site, it has subsites that are custom built for each DrupalCon. Maybe that model would work with what you are thinking about. Make a subsite for each contest, but have a parent site that is about theming Drupal in general.
I think funding through the association is a good start and probably a good idea to funnel the prize money through, but there are other sponsorship opportunities that are untapped.
Also, timing is everything. I think there are beneficial halo effects by having the contest before DrupalCon Paris, announcing winners there and of course having new themes ready before the release of Drupal 7. We need ready to go themes by then.
We need more ideas!
Sorry, I am not familiar with GHOP
Link please?
GHOP is the Google Highly
GHOP is the Google Highly Open Participation contest. There's a group here at http://groups.drupal.org/node/7334 with more info.
Please reference the Graphic Artists Guild Fair Practices...
before deciding on this one. Page 54 contains discusses "speculation and contests." Link below.
http://books.google.com/books?id=doHyI6ami8MC&pg=PA15&lpg=PA15&dq=graphi...
I'm sorry if I've offended anyone, but I was around in the days when this originated and was just as outspoken then. For the record, I feel the same way about those who develop code.
Ok, that's a 15 page paper
Ok, that's a 15 page paper and I don't even know what I'd be looking for in there.
My bad, here is the specific entry on p54
http://www.wildfeed.com/p54.jpg
Yes, it is a case of caveat emptor, and the artist is a big boy (or girl), but page 17 is like the surgeon General's report on a pack of cigarettes. Page 54 (link above) is more akin to the AMA's position on cigarettes and cancer.
Additionally. I have never seen Drupal hold a coding contest and offer prize money for developing a large project. It just duplicates work that winds up getting done in vain. The people who are duped into participation are no longer interested in participating in the community.
I have seen the Knight Foundation offer grants to people whose work warrants it. I am all for that.
I think a contest is exactly the opposite of open source. Open source encourages you to donate your efforts to a project where it can make a difference. that is not the same as if one person gets money directly for their open source contribution and all other contributors do not.
Then money isn't the answer...
...but commission to core or something else like that could be?
There seem to be two avenues here.
One, a contest is run. A number of people who wouldn't make it as designers and who aren't going to win will submit their work, They don't win, and their feelings are hurt because of it. Of the good designers, some will be miffed that they didn't win, but will still have produced an arguably valuable contribution to the community and will commit it to the themes directory anyways, where people will use it and they'll feel good that people like their design. In the end, a lot of people participated and themeing got a boost in the Drupal community overall.
Down the other road, portfolio submissions for commission by someone (Aquila, Drupal Assoc., whomever) will scare the amateurs off from above because they don't have a portfolio to stand on. The good designers will put not insignificant time into a portfolio, submit it, and most will be turned down (as before). In the end they'll have a great portfolio and maybe improve the designs they'd already had (as one rarely uses brand-new designs in a portfolio over mature successful ones, yes?). Not so big a boost because not as many people participated, but maybe the quality of competition was greater?
In the end, with both situations only a few people get to win, so there's miffed egos either way. And they're both contests; they simply put on different hats.
I'm sorry for the arguing, I don't mean to be confrontational here.
Don't be sorry!
Please do not be sorry; I think both of these viewpoints are interesting and I am very happy to see deeply into both of them as I may well be involved in a serious decision on this matter in the near future and I need these data points.
In terms of the contest, the theme would be a GPL'd theme that could be committed to drupal.org repository and used by any or all; no specific purpose for the themes would be implied (so we are not creating a contest for a core theme). In fact, in my opinion, the actual themes created in this contest are a by-product of the system.
Grants are interesting for this, as is a contest. Grants would ultimately reduce the number of participants we can support, and also reduce the amount of payment we can give any individual contributor. In reverse, we can offer pretty interesting prizes (or scholarships) for the winning entries and by producing a number of different categories we might be able to have dozens of winners in varying degrees, insuring that the money does get spread out.
Both positions must be carefully considered in which will be the best way to reach the ultimate goal (more skilled themers participating in the community).
One important thing to do is to look into history. We know that movable type once had a theming contest and it was wildly successful. Also, if we look at OSWD, I feel like it is also very successful and what I really want is something like that where we can get contributions from designers who use that contribution to create a showcase. In that system, both the community and the designers can come out ahead, and that is what open source is, in my opinion, all about.
One thing I'd like to add is
One thing I'd like to add is that for some there is a big focus on professional design firms. This focus is understandable as they are an important part of the ecosystem, but they are not actually the target I'm looking at. Not that I feel that they don't need to be targeted, but because I do agree that a contest has no meaning for them. Professionals are work for hire, doing paid contracts. Their contributions to the community are going to come because they are paid to. They are not going to take a shot at what will amount to a fairly small amount of money.
When I look at the makeup of Drupal developers, I see that we are not primarily, at least when we started out, professional developers. Yes, some of us were professional developers (myself included) but look at the core Drupal contributors. Most of them were at best dabblers or had a lot of experience with it in college. They got into Drupal before they had to concern themselves with professional commitments, either because they were college students and had the free time or because they were doing a hobby site (that's me) and decided to stay.
In my opinion, that's the kind of designers we want to interest as well. I do agree that we will not keep the majority of the entrants into the community. Off the top of my head I'd say that if 5% stay around, it's a major victory. But if we manage a thousand entries then that's 50 designers who might stick around the community. If we pull in only 100 entries that's still 5 people who might stay around the community and add their voices and their work. Anything that increases this population is a good thing, and these people will be looking for paying work in this sector and unless I'm totally mistaken, there's a lot of paying work available for designers out there.
By the way, my avatar...
is a design I contributed to the NYC Drupal User Group. I volunteered to do it in the spirit of Open Source and to give back to the community. I would NEVER have entered a contest and did NOT enter the Drupalcon DC contest. I purchased a ticket and got exactly what I paid for.
Here's a shorter position statement from the AIGA
http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/position-spec-work
What is interesting to note is that the AIGA is revisiting some aspects of this position in consideration of what they refer to as "today’s open-source attitudes". We won't find out the results of that until next month, but even if they do tweak it a little, I suspect they probably won't make any significant departures from their current position.
The trick with design...
The trick with design is that good design solves a specific problem graphically, like "how do I get users to buy more ecological paper towels from my boutique website". The problem with general themes is that there's no specific problem to be solved. It has to work for any number of websites so it gets watered down and all you have to do is 'make this look nice'. That's not actually that hard to do, but the problem is it's also not that interesting. To do or to look at.
There's also the issue with how valuable a theme is to one site when more and more sites are using it. If a site owner values the look and branding on their site then they do not want other sites to have the same look.
We entered the tshirt contest because it had a well defined set of goals (promote drupalcon, reflect dc, fit on a shirt, look cool) but I don't know where to start on a general theme contest. My eyes glaze over, I get bored, and I move on to paying work.
I'm not sure if there a contest solution to this that would satisfy me. I'd personally rather create a showcase site for good drupal design that shows off the specific great work that's out there using drupal. That to me is more interesting and get's around the pitfalls of a general design contest.
--
d.o: canarymason
twitter @canarymason
--
d.o: canarymason
twitter @canarymason
Designing Contrib Themes
I agree with you, I always had a hard time coming up with random design stuff when I was in school and/or trying to build up my portfolio; with no specific problem to solve, design becomes kinda pointless.
But, a great resource for Design ideas for contrib themes can be site mock-ups that were rejected by clients. I have 2-3 leftover Designs that I plan to make into contrib themes (eventually! I'll probably have twice that many designs to chose from by the time I get around to it :-P )
The section in question
The following url is a screencap of what the organization has to say from page 17 regarding the participation in contests.
http://screencast.com/t/lqqDCSBLUs
As far as they are concerned, the artist is a big boy and should decide for him/herself if it's worth their time not being paid for. Open source is built on the idea of donating time to advance a product...
Sorry, that was in reponse
Sorry, that was in reponse to merlinofchaos' comment above: http://groups.drupal.org/node/20016#comment-69170
I was referring to this on page 54
http://www.wildfeed.com/p54.jpg
We should put this to bed
We should put this to bed before it gets dumb.
I highly doubt thiis statement is a revelation to design professionals, or to almost anyone. Yes, everyone but one person loses in a competition. That's a competition. I know you do not assert that the artists submitting their work would be surprised that, when they do not win the competition, they don't receive compensation? An artist is not remunerated for failing to win a contract in an RFP cycle. There is little difference.
It's not just about not winning
Yes, but no designer worth their salt will ever submit spec work as part of an RFP response either. It's not just about work going to waste if you don't win a contest or a project contract, it's about undermining the value of good design.
What many people fail to understand is that design doesn't occur in a vacuum; it's something that's informed by hours of research and experimentation as well. A good design solution is one that is specially crafted for each individual scenario, not just something that is banged out in an afternoon. That's why many designers find the idea of spec work so abhorrent, and are unwilling to participate in any kind of "contest" that has the appearance of asking designers to provide something for nothing.
That's not to say that good designers won't donate their work for a deserving cause; this happens all the time. But in those cases, the designers are going through a full process to ensure that the work they deliver is up to the same standard as a paid project.
It's very different than the way that a lot of open source development occurs. But that difference is something that the Drupal community will need to recognize and respect if it wants to bring top-level design talent into the fold.
Very aptly put. I think your
Very aptly put. I think your argument can be extended to all facets of open source work in general. Drupal is built on PHP -- it's an easy language to work with by computer language standards. Yet, it took as long as it did to get results comparable to what proprietary code shops were doing because that sort of functionality is expensive and time-consuming, just as really effective design is expensive and time-consuming.
In light of the continued conversation here, contests or an open commission RFP would both be the wrong approach. It seems more respectful to the real professionals to have representatives approach and ask for a theme. For the community to support the Association, or someone, in going to X number of shops and saying "We need real themes. Please write one for core" and seeing what happens.
And that's not in violation of the spirit of open source. As Dries pointed out in his State of Drupal address last week, there's a small number of units that produce lots of work, and a very large number of units that produce a little work. This would constitute the few doing lots of work, but having the capital to donate, in time and labor, to getting it done.
IDK
Thank you for bringing some sanity to this discussion
There is a difference. Embrace the design community and they will give back the love. A contest is an insult.
After much reflection, a contest isn't a great idea.
If there's a competition, it should be around which firms are invited to produce design. There should be a public RFQ (Request for Qualifications) that firms are invited to respond to. It should be short and easy, and it should ask responders to provide some detail on experience -- and most importantly -- a portfolio. Firms will be judged by experience and quality of previous work.
These firms should be hired by the Drupal Association to do the work for hire, and the Drupal community should be able to act as a client to these designers, shaping their designs and providing feedback. Under copyright law, the end product should be work-for-hire belonging to the Drupal community, which is then able to include it as part of its license.
Mason's right about an empty canvas being too blank for a designer to respond to. I think the biggest problem with a contest is that it doesn't allow us to provide feedback, and that it doesn't encourage the really well-thought-out solutions that we need. In a contest, any work provided is speculative, so there's a real disincentive to spend the copious amounts of time that this project deserves.
I'm all for having a vanilla theme that's minimally designed and built for workflow and integration. That's not something that can be handled in a competition. For anything else, we should judge what gets included with the Drupal package and what is left as a contrib theme.
In the interest of disclosure, I'd love to have our firm be invited to design the default theme. I'd also like to be part of the review process. In a competition, those two roles are completely incompatible.
@modulist
@modulist
How would you feel about the
How would you feel about the opportunity to mentor design students who were getting scholarships to develop Drupal themes?
I'd love to mentor students, but...
...it would be a colossal mistake to base important themes on student work.
Every now and then you'll find a wiz kid that can create fantastic work in school. They are the 1/100 of 1% of the student population.
Good themes are tough design problems.
@modulist
@modulist
I agree
Students can come up with some great ideas, but I think it's important to remember that they are still learning to be designers, and are lucky to know HTML/CSS (forget about php) beyond the basics. Its just not in the usual curriculum. For something this important, experience is paramount. Any new themes need to be a vast improvement over what exists, and that's hard work even for an experienced professional.
twitter: threehz
d.o: jrefano
It's nice to hear you think out loud
It's nice to hear you think out loud but there are a few too many "shoulds" in your proposal for my liking. If you're curious about how the Drupal community already operates, I suggest looking at how Mark Boulton Design was selected to head up the redesign project.
Who said anything about the default theme?
Maybe sponsor scholarships instead?
I discussed the "theming contest" idea with a number of folks at Drupalcon DC, and while there are some aspects of the idea that have merit (e.g., bringing young design talent into the Drupal fold), the biggest problem with it is that it looks like the Drupal community is soliciting spec work, which is considered an ethical no-no by most designers, and runs the risk of alienating that community.
A better approach might be to commission talented young designers to create themes for Drupal in return for a scholarship, similar to GSOC. The key to this is finding people who understand both design and Drupal and can provide mentorship to these students.
Challenge instead of Contest
I spoke with people who have run contests in the past and learned a few things. For example, the people who don't win are likely to not stick around. There are exceptions but typically if someone doesn't win they move on. We want to recruit designers. For that a competition would be better.
I also like gdemets idea of scholarships like summer of code. If we have summer of design or something we could bring in design students. Just an idea. We need to think of ways to get people involved where people don't loose. If people feel they lost they are likely to walk away.
Matt Farina
www.innovatingtomorrow.net
www.geeksandgod.com
www.superaveragepodcast.com
www.mattfarina.com
Matt I'm going to quote you:
At the BoF you said "coders beat each other with socks filled with pennies."
Well, you can quote me here, "Artists beat themselves with socks filled with pennies, and we don't need any help from the outside world when we do it."
I admire the way you approached this whole issue by opening yourself up to the design community and by giving us a chance to be heard. Competition is NOT part of the artistic process, even when popularity is factored in.
You won't have much trouble finding designers willing to contribute their work as long as you do not make it into a contest or even a competition.
The big secret is collaboration. Artists want to meet people with whom they can exchange ideas and learn.
It is part of the process that produces great work. Drupal offers that sense of community.
Use the force Luke.
Just gathering ideas here
Just gathering ideas here from different people. We have lots of interesting ideas so far.
My new suggestion is to have many categories. More chances to win.
Also, the contest doesn't
Also, the contest doesn't have to be a blank slate. We can have themes or concepts that designers can choose from.
Even if there were no "losers" or no "winners", I'm in favor of a voting system. Although designers need positive reinforcement & acknowledgment, there needs to be a counter balance of criticism from peers and the public.
A contest is like a moon shot, there's high risk and high reward. There aren't losers in GPL'd code and there's plenty of karma and positive halo effects that come with it.
Motivation
I am a designer and a big fan of drupal, and I look forward to contribute with the community in the near future mainly for 2 reasons:
Big Gratitude: Because I have been able to create complex sites needing very few coding. But this is the consequence of the hundreds of hours working with the cms and because I defend myself with php....
Marketing: Having drupal.org a big traffic, donating a theme will help to market my services. But at the same time I always remember what my partner used to tell me: "..you don't want to market yourself in the open source market, because most of the users want everything for free (or very cheap) ", and I don't totally agree with that but there is some true about it....
So the main reason for me to donate a theme is gratitude.
Would I participate in a contest?
Although the prize could be interesting I wouldn't participate for some reasons:
Design is basically a graphic solution for a communication problem, but some people think design is about making something fancy, (decoration), and so, making the parameters of approbation, personal taste. When we talk about a general template there is no graphical problem to solve, It is just a beauty contest. Even if there are categories, It's a beauty contest with categories.
Sometimes Design is about managing assets (ie fonts, images, scripts, icons, renders, etc), and if you are looking for quality those are not free. So in some level it would be a competition of resources. Off course I could produce some, but as a freelancer I wouldn't like to compete with a company.
In contests, only the winners get recognition. I would be easier to just donate a nice template that deserves a homepage post.
I am not interested in reinforcing the concept of "I will pay you if I like it", that enemy still hunt us designers these days.
So to conclude I think that drupal could benefit in motivate us designers to donate work in exchange of some sort of recognition as contributors, as I think coders receives most of the cases.
Hope this makes sense.
Understood on the no spec issue
I fully understand the positions on no spec work. This is a VERY different situation. Also, as merlinofchaos has mentioned a theme contest produces themes as a side effect.
Note: theme -- not design. Pretty with bad HTML loses. Pretty with bad PHP loses. Pretty but doesn't work in IE6 -- lose (in one category ... I'd also love to see a Safari4 only pushed to the max theme).
We'd start by having categories. Maybe for different types of sites -- personal blog, news, ecommerce, etc. Maybe even for specific sets of modules, or tpl packs for modules (e.g. I'd love to see a couple of awesome date / calendar themes).
Next, the learning. Lots of online tutorials, IRC sessions, screencasts, etc. Showing theming AND design best practices. Everybody wins.
Lastly, the contest. Some win, some lose, everybody gets a measure of win by being involved, upping their game. I fully expect no "professionals" to participate. Except, of course, those that value front page placement on a Page Rank 9 site as "payment".
OK, one more lastly. I would state under the rules that ONLY the winning entries would required to be GPL and committed. That means the design is still the creators work, and can be sold. I think the main issue with many contests is that they require the rights up front. If you never give up your rights, you still have the chance that you won't get paid ... but you do retain the rights and can do all sorts of creative things.
I would never hope to hold a design competition. I would hold a theme competition.
@boris Good choice of words.
@boris Good choice of words. A "theme" competition better describes the scope of it. Starting off theming the pack makes sense if the pack has a purpose based on the categories you mentioned. Possibly breaking the theming down into constituent parts. Perhaps one could be a whole site wide theme, while another can just be calendar or a tag cloud for example. That would lower the barrier of entry and make it more specific. Although that would make the smaller theming more like GHOP tasks.
Good point on rights. This resolves the loser issue. If you lose, you keep your theme, retain the rights, sell it, reuse it, etc. Then all is well.
+1 to Boris's suggestions
Very excellent point. I
Very excellent point. I think what Boris has said above cuts through a lot of the head-butting here.
Theme competition, not design competition.
There have got to be lots of programmers, UX and AI specialists who have optimized themes and built loads more advanced functionality into them than the basic offerings on the .org site.
We'd be bringing new theme architecture and function into Drupal, maybe eventually core, and would be providing an opportunity for probably the least-recognized part of the process. Everyone sees the design, everyone uses the modules, but who really takes the time to recognize amazing theme back-ends?
Plus, the artists in the community won't have to worry about being tricked into giving away their work, because no one would be asking them to give away their work.
And the "keep it unless you win" premise is also a very nice touch.
Lets' shift the discussion to the challenge
Clearly, we're not going to come to agreement on whether a design competition with a cash prize is going to be the best route.
The Drupal community still needs well-built themes -- desperately -- and those themes need to be reviewed and vetted. Let's try to shift our discussion over to framing the theme problem better as a design challenge.
My firm was in the position of designing vanilla themes, a few years ago for IBM Websphere. To be able to come up with concepts, we had to create our own challenges with themes for a fictional law firm, a fictional ecommerce store, a fictional electronics showcase, and a fictional extranet. Otherwise, the canvas was too blank. Even at that, it was a hugely different process from designing a custom theme for a client.
We all like playing Monday morning quarterback -- and designers are no different. In fact, it's easier for a designer to re-design existing work than to come up with a brand new design on a white canvas. If Stark can be the foundation for that redesign, fantastic. If we put up a straw man that's more elaborate, even better. In my opinion, it's easier to redesign Garland than to start from scratch.
I propose that we shift our focus to the theming problem and putting together a base theme for the designers to start with. Let's define parameters for file size, CSS structure, accessibility. Let's have our laundry list of requirements. This is the sort of challenge that designers thrive on. It also helps us articulate our needs better if we're looking for designers outside the community.
Momendo, would you like to start a wiki page to describe the Drupal Design Challenge? I think it'll help us continue to make progress, while we try to stir up interest in the design community at large.
@modulist
@modulist
Progress on the base theme is a good plan
Having a more organized framework will help Drupal attract designers to community.
Call it what you will: contest, challenge...whatever. The Graphic Artists Guild and the AIGA both advise designers to be suspect of these affairs and use caution at the very least, yet it continues to surface as a solution.
Do you think you will attract designers with an event that will eventually offend them?
If the community wants better looking themes here's a link: http://www.templatemonster.com/category/drupal-templates/
TAKE THE PRIZE MONEY AND BUY SOME PROFESSIONAL LOOKING THEMES FROM DESIGNERS WHO ARE TRYING TO EARN A LIVING DOING QUALITY WORK.
SHOW SOME RESPECT FOR THE PEOPLE YOU ARE TYING TO ATTRACT TO THE COMMUNITY AND WHOSE CONTRIBUTIONS AND PARTICIPATION YOU SEEK.
Review of Drupal themes from TemplateMonster
TemplateMonster is a fine example of a theme shop that produces themes that look good but has been criticized for lacking the qualities I list above (flexibility, coding standards, etc.). They are by no means alone in this regard.
The only type of theming competition that makes sense is one that weighs the overall design with the actual quality of the theme. It's interesting that there are some in this discussion that are still confusing designing with theming.
A
A contest/competition/[insert name here] is designed to both make new content, but more so to raise awareness. Purchasing designs defeats that purpose. Yes, Drupal gets a few new good designs, but the time/resources are spent in a way that brings no one new to the community.
Buying theme skins seems a great deviation from the drupal philosophy. Many of us are professionals who would gladly be selling the time and effort we put into this community, but instead participate here outside of the hours we're in the office at our actual jobs. Yet, contributions still come in, projects are still maintained, and new contributors are still attracted.
Can Drupal be as buttoned-up, well-engineered, well-documented, and well-designed as some of the other "open" CMS solutions? Sure, if we want to establish a central directional body that decides what changes will be made etc.
Drupal is not, however, run by a central board of directors. It hasn't been, and I'd bet the community doesn't want it to be in the near future.
The community could hire engineers to fix the many speed, efficiency and infrastructure problems.
The community could hire technical writers to rewrite the documentation for core and modules to make them accessible to non-ninjas.
The community could hire project managers to get essential non-core modules on track and completed.
All of those contributions are done at (as far as I can tell?) almost no expense to the community at large or the Drupal Association. From intimate professional knowledge, technical writers are as loath to "give away" their brainpower as it sounds you two are your artistic talents. We have only so many hours a day we can produce quality, effective writing and most of that is given to work. But there's still loads of documentation, some of it very good documentation. Should we demand compensation for our time and effort? And the engineers, without whom this whole thing would still be a message board on Dries' local network? Should they demand the community provide compensation for their modules?
There has been offense herein derived when none was originally designed. I'm going to stop here because I know I'm just running this around in circles with wildfeed, and we've now brought others into it.
--
Player Queen:
Both here and hence pursue me lasting strife,
If once I be a widow, ever I be a wife!
Player King:
'Tis deeply sworn. Sweet, leave me here a while,
My spirits grow dull, and fain I would beguile
The tedious day with sleep.
Player Queen:
Sleep rock thy brain,
And never come mischance between us twain!
Hamlet:
Madam, how like you this play?
Queen:
The lady doth protest too much, methinks.
This is great. The more
This is great. The more opinions, the better. I started in one thread, more talk than any that has occurred previously. Although I will say, we don't need the ALL CAPS shouting. g.d.o ops will put the kibosh on us and we'll lose the group again. Gulp! In any case, game on!
Okay, I get your opinion
Okay, I get your opinion, I do. I'm not sure that I fully agree or that the group will decide in your direction, ultimately, but I'm certain this will be discussed more. That all remains to be seen. The caps are a bit much and largely read as yelling, howevever, so please let's try not to let this get derailed into an argument.
I think everyone has been considering this option in making it a successful one. Personally, I think we can do much better than a simple contest.. something that would be much more satisfying for all. It feels a bit like one of those choices that get instantly thrown out there (I'm guilty as well) as something to do in lieu of doing nothing. That having been said, any designer than wanted to use a contest to compete probably isn't completely established yet and are looking for a way to get noticed, and I really doubt their entering that process would totally alienate them. I also doubt that from entry level designers we're going to get a lot of great designs, which is what your post here seems to imply the goal is. The goal is to raise awareness and generate a wave of great design production in the Drupal world. I think we should be open to discussing all sorts of ideas that would further that goal.
-=- christopher
-=- christopher
"A wave of great design production in the Drupal world"
Yours is one of the few posts that starts to get at the real issue. How do we attract new talent who can create great exposure for themselves and the community? We have a great opportunity to attract people who can drive the visual aspect of Drupal. Do you think pitting them against each other is a good way to do that?
sorry about the caps.
TAKE THE PRIZE MONEY AND BUY
This flies in the face of both the purpose of the contest (or whatever it eventually ends up being) AND the idea of open source being contribution driven. If we simply buy a few themes we are getting some themes, which as I said above is not the goal.
I am against a competition as well
This has been debated so hotly and deeply here that I'll just keep my response brief. I personally don't think a competition will help anyone. It's not inspiring for most designers and anyone really good will probably not bother wasting their time trying to win some competition at the expense of "real" work, giving away the rights or not.
If the end result is that we just want some great themes to come with D7, why not hire someone (they aren't running a contest to redesign d.o for a good reason), or buy a few existing professional themes as wildfeed suggested above? All caps are prob unnecessary but I agree with the sentiment. ;)
If the end result is to attract new designers/themers to Drupal, then I'll go ahead and agree with modulist about working out the requirements for a more designer-friendly base theme.
However, we probably need both.
twitter: threehz
d.o: jrefano
Whatever it is, a wishlist has been started
We've started a list of things we'd like to see come out of the competition/challenge. Please feel to edit it here: http://groups.drupal.org/node/20079
@modulist
@modulist
Had all the seats in the doc sprint not been filled...
I never would have shown up at the Design and Theming BoF.
Didn't see the need for any documentation contests to get people in to help. Just folks volunteering whatever effort they felt good about contributing.
No trickery involved. No promise of any prize to the winner.
As many of us, myself
As many of us, myself included, are probably unable to articulate the details that set apart what I would presume is "nice" design and "good" design, so to are many unable to articulate the difference between "nice" writing and "good" writing. I would assert that the vast majority, as I'm sure is the case in the design side, falls no higher than into the "nice" category. There are some brillant TC's in the community, hat's off to Addi et. al., but most of the work is left to programmers who treat documentation as an afterthought.
So both could use a pick-me-up. Maybe we can come up with novel tactics for raising awareness for both?
To be fair, there is also
To be fair, there is also not a great need to attract skilled documentation writers to the project either. Oh sure there is a need to get more documentation written but we do not have a 5 year problem of "There just aren't enough tech writers interested in Drupal," like we do with themers. I don't believe the analogy applies here.
What have I walked into?
This has been a problem for 5 years?!
It's been about 2 years since I dipped my toe in the water and stated exploring Drupal so in that respect I'm relatively new - but finding my way. Have since met some developers whose skills I worship. Maybe if the developers declared a "Buy a Themer a Beer Week" or played softball or went bowling with them, the whole community would be off to a better start.
I've never encountered two groups of people who needed each other more.
With all respect, we sir may
With all respect, we sir may be experiencing two different Drupals.
I'd modify the end of your second sentence to "There just aren't enough people interesting in writing for Drupal." Many people write pages. Writing for Drupal and committing excellent writing to the documentation are not necessarily inclusive, just as crafting a theme and crafting a good theme are not necessarily inclusive.
We have some 450 themes between 4.7 and 6.x, but the quality is what we're discussing the need of, and it was the focus of the comparison. Just as there are a few thousand (I think?) modules, but it's the quality of the modules that comes into question. Simply, the analogy does extend and there is a need.
I know, the immunologist sees a virus and the oncologist sees cancer, but as a tech writer it is nakedly apparent how much more accessible, and how much more respected, this CMS would be with properly researched, planned, and usable documentation outside of core. There is a reason so many people don't stray from core modules or themes, and it's not because core is all-inclusive.
The community needs more of everyone, and more participation from those who are here.
Here's the rub
Drupal has done wonders developing an aura for itself in the developer community. There's the coolness of open source, and then there's the coolness of ... Drupal.
Unfortunately, since the Drupal community hasn't cultivated any relationships with the design community, Drupal's coolness equity is zero. There's really very little to motivate designers to give up hours of their time for (what in their minds is) an obscure piece of software. Drupal is not MTV nor Absolut Vodka, and can't pretend to draw the same caliber of free work that they have for years.
Sadly we're reaping what we sow in the design community. A competition isn't morally wrong -- It's just wrong for us in 2009 without a major PR push first. Let's start planting some seeds of design coolness first.
@modulist
@modulist
Very interesting
Very interesting perspective.
I don't suppose we have any PR specialists or enthusiasts listening on the thread?
Wildfeed, jrefano, others: other than contests (which seem to turn designers away from us and really p*** them off) and advertising that we're looking to hire people (which breaks with Drupal philosophy and doesn't do much for getting new designers) what sorts of approaches would you respond at least inquisitively to? What social networks would it be good for us to start breaking into to plant Drupal seeds?
I know DeviantART used to be big, but, in support of Wildfeed's and others' assertions, I think the constant "design a ____ for _____" contests seem to have driven a lot of the core designer "community" out of the site and left it occupied with a bunch of good people interested in selling, rather than sharing. What networks are "in" in the design community at large these days?
With 450,000 or so Drupal users, there have to be some smashingly-awesome sites to flaunt out there. Would collecting and showcasing those be a way to help show the design community that, yes, Drupal can look good?
Also, how about themers? We keep leaving them on the wayside. What pastures to themers graze in? What attracts a themer to new open source projects? What makes them stay? How do we support people new to PHP or Drupal themeing in the documentation, etc. so that they make it through the learning curve and have the opportunity to become successful, contributing members of the community? (Other than throwing contests or offering to pay them)
WOW! Turned a corner here, have we?
So now, if we come to some sort of agreement that our mission is to find a way to interest developers (themers, designers, coders, clients and anyone else with a stake in producing a great looking/functioning site that draws positive attention to itself and the content it displays) we can begin to take a positive brainstorming approach.
What do we have to work with? Oh, probably the most powerful community building tool in the history of the planet.
There's drupalsites.net which lists links to sites from puppies to porn regardless of how well or poorly designed they are.
What if we crank that concept up a notch and combine it with our Design and Theme Showcase Committee? We could shine a light ito the dark corners of the net, find the great site developers and give them an "open mike." How would they feel about displaying their avatars and telling stories about what it takes to do great work, who influences and inspires them along with the pitfalls and pratfalls of the business?
One part technology, two parts creativity and a dash of humanity. Shaken, not stirred.
Thoughts?
That would be very cool. I
That would be very cool.
I think we could have a greater impact on the respective areas of development if we were able to customize the attention we're trying to direct in specific ways. Developers will want a different kind of attention, or attention focused in a different way, than themers, than writers, than designers. They participate in different communities and frequent different spheres of influence.
I've had a glimpse of where the developers are, and I try and spend time with fellow writers... but I personally have no clue where the "places to be" on the Web are for graphic designers.
I'd love to know, though. Understanding the audience of the targeted marketing, the designers, will be crucial for that part of the push.
So, anyone listening still, chime in please?
If community have few designers, listen their opinion
One reason coders can contribute more is because sometimes they need to develop code for their clients and that same code could be reused as a module, that is a philosophy of many people for what I've seen...
Design is different, custom web design can not be easily reused because we designers make an effort of making it unique and memorable to audience.
The only reason templates exists is because they are easier to sell than custom design, as they become products rather than services, We Designers are proud of not using templates and sometimes we see them as evil. For example lot of people sell "design" but they just use templates and change the logo and some image, and so they cheat the clients and hurt the industry.
I mention this because many coders are not aware of this kind of things and they expect designers to have the same reusing attitude and sometimes sadly design is seen as a small complement of software.
The community have few designers, and I am sure lots of them won't be in favor of creating templates, and some others will need an important motivation for creating them.
Many people find contest interesting mostly the people who are going to receive lots of design proposals and paying only for 1 or 2, and many designers will participate for sure if the prize is good, but if they are truly in the design business they know how bad contest are for the industry.
I think you should listen designers if you want to attract them to participate in the community.
Yes -- Wildfeed impressed
Yes -- Wildfeed impressed upon that point quite a bit above. The thread at this point has pretty deftly excised the contest for money idea.
We want to listen, but the designers then need to say more than "I hate contests." That part has been settled. We need to know what to do, so lets move forward.
And a beef:
There are too many people in the Weboverse who want sites and don't want to pay for unique, inspired custom Web sites; themes exist because people don't want to hire custom designers for their personal blogs and sites about a lolcat their kid made, not because evil designers want to hurt the design industry.
competitions and leader boards
I feel like I'm late to the party even though it's only been a couple of days!
As the daughter of an artist and personally as a recovering professional bookbinder I can say that design competitions are, at best, completely demoralizing for the artist. Of course it's exciting if you're the winner, but there can be only one winner. (Or maybe a handful.)
Competition fosters a leader board mentality. If there is only one design competition, you will not retain the designers who are motivated by "winning" and being at the top of the leader board. Once the competition is over, they will leave the community if there are no more opportunities to win. If we pursue the competition route, awards should be handed out on a regular basis (once a month?) for existing designs. C'mon, y'all remember how exciting it was to be selected as the Hot Site of the Week back in the '90s just for doing a site that you already loved working on? Let's revive the glory days and make it cool to do good work for the sake of good work!
Another big sticking point to consider if we are soliciting new work is maintenance. So a designer/themer wins a prize for new work. Yay! The code is GPLed and put into the CVS. Woo! What happens when we suddenly want a D7 version of the theme? Who will maintain it? Whose responsibility is it to keep that theme up to date? There's a good chance that a theme competition will lead to a lot of "dead" code. It is more important to foster relationships than it is to get a single submission that is not maintained over time.
I would like to see more education around design/theming (as Boris mentioned) that also includes reasons to GPL a theme and what a designer might be able to get from offering their designs. I know that walkah worked on converting a theme from something to Drupal a while back. He couldn't upload it to d.o though because of the license. Not all designers/themers want to GPL their work, but I bet some would be interested. (If it's done right, it can be an honour to be asked!!) If we want to get more themes for people to use, I think this is the low hanging fruit -- converting existing themes to Drupal or to the GPL license.
I would like to see more outreach by the Drupal community to designers to create new designs as well. I love that Acquia is working with Top Notch Themes. Inspired by this initiative, I am already working with one of my favourite graphic designers on a very long term project to produce a Drupal theme. She will provide the imagination and I will provide the "code" to convert the design into a GPL theme. I can't imagine she would have ever been interested in entering a competition but she is thrilled to have been asked to collaborate on a project that will showcase her work as a designer. Are there more opportunities like this where we can reach out to people we admire and ask for help?
Not a good idea
The design community has been fighting the idea of "design contests" ever since I can remember. This is not the way to get them on board.
how has it worked out for others...
I wonder if it worth taking a look at the outcomes that other groups have had from this approach before deciding if it is a good idea or not.
There have been WordPress theming competitions for years (and I'm sure I saw a Tweet from Matt yesterday about yet another one) - google it and take a look at the themes that get submitted and that win and ask yourself whether or not that's the kind of design and theming we really want to add into the mix.
From my subjective standpoint, there may be a lot of WordPress themes out there but the VAST majority of them are hideous and I'd never contemplate putting them anywhere near a site I was building. There are very few good 'free' Wordpress themes, and relatively recently we've seen the emergence of 'Premium' Themes where more and more people are willing to pay a small fee to use a beautifully designed and well coded Theme for their site.
The difference in quality (both from a design, code and usability perspective) between the 'free' and the 'premium' themes for WordPress is staggering.
I completely agree that there are big challenges in getting more designers into the fold, and more themers (and I'd consider the two to be often different people, which is a whole other discussion), but I really don't think that Drupal will greatly benefit from going down the road of a theme competition.... but, really - go check out the WordPress experience and see what you think.
leisa reichelt - disambiguity.com
user experience consultant (design research and user centred design)
working with Mark Boulton Design on the drupal.org redesign project
leisa reichelt - disambiguity.com
@leisa
Distilling things down
I would not expect super high quality themes to emerge from this contest. It's been stated that a good theme takes 40-80 hours to produce and generally on a very specific spec, and those themes are largely intended to be used once and are part of a brand. We simply are going to be unable to acquire these as public contributions through any efforts we make.
It is clear to me that the developer model we use does not work for themers. [Note: I am now exclusively using the word temer now because I have a feeling 'design challenge' and 'theme challenge' come across very differently.] It is clear that the professional designers object very much to this.
It is not clear to me that we have a way of reaching the professional designers...at all, at least not as a medium term goal involving a medium amount of money. Wordpress' division between free and premium themes is starting up in Drupal, too; compare to TopNotchThemes which is an obvious example of premium themes that are far, far better than anything you'll find in contrib, but you'll have to be pretty serious about your site to use them. No one simply putting together a hobby site is going to be interested.
As for Wordpress...the wide variety of average but usable themes is often held up as a big advantage that Wordpress has over Drupal. I have heard that often. For people who just want to quickly explore what Drupal can do, having a wide variet of functional themes is important. They do not have to be stellar. I posit that given my first paragraph, they can never be stellar unless we invest a hundred thousand (or more) into building a set of stellar themes. That is not the kind of money I am looking to invest, here.
I am very concerned with the concept that a contest would be perceived as insulting, however. I still think a contest is a good idea, but I am now at a loss as to how to present it. The alternatives I've been presented are largely unappealing. They seem to largely boil down to 'pay for some spec work' which fails to meet the goal.
Here are some key points I'd like to address:
1) The ultimate goal is new contributors. Yes, the keep ratio will be bad, we know this from Summer of Code. We hope to nurture the ones who seem excited by the community.
2) New themes are a by-product that would be nice to have. As Emma pointed out, we'll need to get people on board to help maintain these.
3) I simply don't see us successfully targeting professional designers, at least not through this direction.
4) I love Boris' idea that only winning entries would be required to be GPL'd and committed; non-winning entries will still be owned by the submitter. We would still keep resources available to help them contribute these resources if they wish.
5) I would not use a traditional single prize structure. I'm thinking about one grand prize and then a largish (dozen) moderate sized prizes that could be given for different categories. Perhaps categories the judges make up. This could provide more winners.
6) The showcase itself is important. I see it as the Drupal version of OSWD where designers who do not have a name are trying to make one, and I believe this is a critical component. This relates closely to point 3.
7) Contest/scholarship/challenge -- the wording here is difficult, but we have to be careful. If we simply pay everyone who participates, I think we lose. If we treat it like Summer of Code, we have to have a lot more resources to mentor the entrants, a lot more money and I am not sure we'll truly get better results. I may be wrong here. Last year two SoC entrants were trying to create new themes and they both failed. 2 is a small sample size but it is a bit of evidence that this will be problematic.
8) We must be careful about too many restrictions. If these entries take more than 10-15 hours of work, I don't think we'll get many. We want people to be able to put something they like together in a relatively short time frame so they do not feel overwhelmed by the labor required to contribute.
9) Finally, this must not be insulting to potential entrants. A big worry: Since this won't be targetted at professional design firms, we need to make it clear that
a) what we are trying to generate is more community participation,
b) NOT spec work, and
c) NOT high quality professional themes but instead we're looking for FUN themes that would be most useful to someone just trying Drupal out who wants to throw up a quick website.
Can I get further thoughts, particularly from those who've been arguing against this?
On SoC theme projects / mentoring / etc.
I should point out that both http://drupal.org/project/lightfantastic and http://drupal.org/project/deco still exist from SoC 2007 and even have 6.x versions now (the latter still maintained by the student who created it). So I wouldn't call them failures. They're both nice themes and I see them pop up on sites from time to time and it always makes me smile. :)
But, there was an awful lot of stress related to these two projects, because:
a) We had very, very few people we could call upon to be theming mentors back in 2007. Ted Serbinski hired his student during SoC to work on other stuff, and with Steven Wittens was reaching the bitter end of his days in our community (though to his credit, he did a great job hounding his student when it appeared he was falling off the grid).
b) SoC is not really structured well at all to this type of work. During the part where the design is being created, you obviously don't have frequent CVS commits. An issue queue doesn't really make sense as a tool to ask others for incremental feedback. Etc. So we had to chase the students down several times to kind of reel them back in. However, we've gotten smarter about some things in the years since then, and we now require students to be active within the SoC group soliciting community opinions, so that might help.
That said, Summer of Code 2009 is around the corner. If we think we want to try this again, I'd be a lot more comfortable nowadays when our community is so much bigger and diverse. I noticed when we had two theming slots we also attracted a lot of women applicants that year, too.
I can't really comment on the rest of your post, but I am reading this thread with voracious interest. :)
A team approach?
Perhaps a good place to start would be an uncompetiton at the DUG/g.d.o level where local groups of developers, themers and designers could collaborate and field entries. This would serve two goals, first getting different cultures to interact for the benefit of the community, and second, possibly result in worthwhile contrib themes that work, and can be GPL'd and maintained.
There is an element of pride and self promotion that can be built into the program. Encouraging designers, themers, developers (and perhaps even sponsors) to get to know each other, to collaborate and to learn how things are done on the other side of the fence is a great way to advance community building on a local level.
By promoting the new themes and the personalities who produced them, the participants may enjoy greater prominence in the Drupal community and beyond.
Once those teams have proven that they are up to the task, the resources which may have previously been used as prize money might now be allocated for use as grants to encourage further participation and development.
Lastly, and perhps most importantly for Drupal to develop to its full potential, a realization of the fact that visual presentation is a critical component to its widespread acceptance. The people who make the designs and themes work bring skills that are as hard to come by as anyone else's.
Let's remember this is for
Let's remember this is for designers AND themers. In many cases, it's the same person who can do both!
I'm really warming up to calling it a "Theming Challenge" So far, I see a lot of designers shooting down the idea. But let's just say a designer makes a beautiful, well thought out design. The next task is to theme it with XHTML, CSS, Javascript and PHP. How would you make your theme stand out from others? Would you add support for the color module? Do you support fluid or fixed layouts? At what resolution? Do you use grid-based CSS? Is your CSS table-less and W3C validated? How good is your 508/WCAG/WAI-ARIA compliance? Do you have dynamic animations and widgets using jQuery? Do you go the extra mile and theme Views, Panels and CCK components? Do you provide alternate stylesheets for printing or mobile devices? Do you provide any helper functions for theming? How well documented your code? Is your code clean and readable? Do you support IE6 browsers? Is your code and images lightweight and efficient for low-bandwidth devices?
You can have a theme with a mediocre design but be chock full of clean, well-documented code, have broad device support and other neat features. A mediocre theme that's well coded can beat a beautiful theme with bad code.
Testing Tools
Just wanted to point folks to http://groups.drupal.org/accessibility for testing tools for 508/WCAG/WAI-ARIA compliance.
Would really like to have more theme developers start using these tools before publishing their themes.
Mike
OpenConcept | CLF 2.0 | Podcasting
--
OpenConcept | Twitter @mgifford | Drupal Security Guide
+1 to accessible themes
+1 to that, Mike. Accessible design is mandatory for many governmental sites, and the limited number of accessible themes available in Drupal is a turnoff for many in that community. Ensuring that themes produce accessible output is a way to demonstrate that we truly mean for Drupal to be a community for everyone, regardless of their disabilities.
Mike, if themers scan the Accessibility wiki for items that are flagged to be checked in core themes, will that give them an idea of issues they need to consider?
Themers who are skeptical about the importance of accessibility should check out Mike's video of a friend who has mobility impairments doing a usability test on a typical Drupal 7 screen.
Accessibility summary for themers and usability folks
Not really sure. Think we do need to sit down and do more to introduce accessibility issues into the Theming documentation. For right now though there's the Accessibility Documentation that came from the Doc Sprint at DrupalCon.
Another good place to begin looking is the Theme Changes for Accessibility Improvements in Drupal 7:
- Garland: Use appropriate header-tags following the W3C
- Garland has problem with HTML order for screenreaders
- Navigation menus should be preceded by headings of the appropriate level (usually h2).
- Skip Navigation' should be in all core themes
- Defining WAI-ARIA Landmark Roles in Garland
There's a lot that can be done and lots of best practices being tossed about on the Net.
Mike
OpenConcept | CLF 2.0 | Podcasting
--
OpenConcept | Twitter @mgifford | Drupal Security Guide
Next steps
We can all agree on the goals that momendo listed kicking off this discussion. This has turned into a painful-but-necessary conversation about how to engage the design community (and the sorry job that Drupal has done to date).
So where do we go from here? Here are some proposals
1) Public relations
Let's increase the visibility (or more importantly, coolness) of Drupal in the design community. We need to get ink about how Drupal is a great up-and-coming CMS, and what great design work is being done. To this end, there's a new wiki in this discussion group listing PR Targets for design of places to start getting some ink. Please add to it as you see fit.
2) Showcase, showcase, showcase
The Drupal community isn't just dependent on others to get the word out, it can publish on its own. This is why a design showcase is so absolutely critical. We missed a golden opportunity by not asking Drupalcon DC attendees to showcase their best work with their bios. In the next few weeks, we should put out a call for showcase sites to the Drupal Community, and start assembling these into a separate site.
3) Site of the month /week spotlight
Emmajane's idea of bringing back the Cool Site of the Day is great. From the library of excellent showcase sites we'll assemble, we can choose to focus on an individual case study and profile its creators.
4) Theme of the month /week spotlight
Let's have a spotlight on the most interesting "new" theme every month. It's an editor's pick -- not a competition -- and that frees us to focus on areas that are critical to Drupal in a timely fashion. It can also include a profile on the theme's creator(s).
5) Best practices research
I think we should start putting together a list of the best themes that are out there already, regardless of whether they've been built for Drupal or not. This is going to be how we set the bar for any work that we solicit, and it's going to be a source of inspiration for our design community.
6) Design Challenge / Call for Themes
Once we've gotten the word out and painted a picture of what can be done with Drupal, then we can start soliciting work from designers. This can be an invitation-only process to solicit premium (core) themes or it can be a broader Call for Themes for a greater variety of work -- or both.
In general, creative people are motivated more by status and recognition than by money. As a designer, I'd be very interested in the recognition that a spotlight in any of the above sections would give me or my firm.
@modulist
@modulist
Also worth reading...
http://www.carsonified.com/fowd/new-competition-design-the-fowd-2009-hol...
This thread has managed to completely alienate/infuriate a whole bunch of high-profile designers. Let's not have a repeat of this in our first attempt to reach out to this important audience.
I love the clarity of your last post.
The question is now:
"What can the community do to encourage mutual admiration and respect among designers, themers and developers?"
Excellent reference, Angie.
Excellent reference, Angie. I think that the "design contest" was one of those "hey what about this!@?" kind of ideas that came out of enthusiasm for the initiative and everyone wanting to do something and I believe it has been considered and summarily dropped from the collective barrel 'o ideas due to its potential inflammatory nature and downside.
Claudio and myself had an idea for some time now that I definitely think is worth exploring that I'm planning on posting about here in a day or so (just wanted to hash a few things out first before I present the idea.)
-=- christopher
-=- christopher
Can we close this thread and start a new discusion?
This is going in circles and is doing no good now for moving forward.
Can the thread be closed and can we move over to a new one, fresh with the goal of determining an alternative to That-Which-Shall -Not-Be-Named? We're otherwise going to lose the potential we have of doing something useful with all of this good whiteboarding.
OK, I have started a new discussion...
and posted a suggestion.
http://groups.drupal.org/node/20548
Perhaps anyone who has something to add or wishes to disagree will comment.
Just want to Point Out ...
I'm not exactly sure how this new Wiki started with what appears to be a whole new set of requirements... BUT
- I think it would be good for someone just to clarify what exactly to go by - it might seem a bit confusing to some folks.
// For this category, I think that is where a little clarification is ideal since this category may be more important.
example:
** To clarify, obviously this is most likely where a PSD file will not work,
since the majority of its work will be in the themeing and CSS.
One option
Hey all,
In my opinion competitions tend to create more alienation than quality. If you really want to get professional themes for Drupal then here is what I would do.
Organize (tag) themes. Free tagging could work well. As was mentioned earlier, themes are design solutions that solve a problem. The problem the theme solves would be related by the theme's tags. Right now all themes are lumped into one big fat ugly stack. This huge stack is both hard to look and reflects a sense of laziness to boot.
Allow people to vote on themes. With voting, the really good ones float to the top. The lack of interactivity drives many great designers away from Drupal because getting their "Perfect" theme lumped into all those others in such a willy-nilly way is not too attractive a proposition for really great designers.
Enable people to "propose" a theme to the community as an attempt to get sponsorship. They can upload an image(s) as rendered from PSD files. People can then add to a bounty pot and once the developer is satisfied development can begin... On delivery money is given to said developer. These too would be tagged and voted on.
Have featured themes. A section showcasing the HOTTEST themes would truly rock!!!
So in conclusion. The theme organizational system at Drupal.org is bad enough to drive many o good designer to despair! Why can't we tag themes? Why cant we vote on themes? Why can we not propose themes and look for bounties? Why is the Drupal system of organizing themes so darned limited? Must all themes just be added to big long unreadable lists where they may become comfortably lost and forgotten?
You want to know how to get people to look at your themes now? Name it ".Aardvark". You might get some views if you do that...
I would love nothing more than to see Drupal come up a few notches in these areas and I can say with confidence that if we do not do something about it. Drupal will not easily see any improvement in theme quality and most likely reductions in quality will increase. Furthermore, without improvement of categorization, Drupal itself may very well be relegated to the history books. **
Derek Webb
http://collectivecolors.com ***
** I LOVE Drupal so it truly pains me to see such foibles continue in this respect.
*** Please pardon the stale site. I am working on a new one at the moment that will be much better than the present one. I have been busy for the last year and have hardly had a chance to work on my own stuff until about a month ago...
https://coraltechgroup.com