This week I re-launched AdaptiveThemes as the first site to crowd source commercial Drupal themes. Sounds like a radical idea and it probably is. I seen crowdsourcing work for a number of other high profile design projects and I believe these crowd sourced themes can be a huge win for Drupal users and the Drupal designer and themer communities.
The concept is strait forward:
- Designers upload designs
- Themers convert the designs into beautiful Drupal themes
- We sell them and split the profits 50/50, designer gets half, themer gets half
We deduct expenses so we can maintain the site, pay our accountant and offer support. Other than that I'm just another themer earning my 50% and so is everyone involved with the project thus far.
The feedback has been extremely positive, both from designers and themers - we've had a good response and both camps are joining the crowd. Themers may join the site however we will hand pick a select few to do the actual porting. I want to maintain the highest level of code quality. So far there are 3 themers involved and each has 3-5 years experience in Drupal theme development.
All the themes are being built on the same base theme developed by yours truly which is based on Genesis but does not utilise subthemes. It includes tonnes of theme settings and many additional regions and other goodies.
Forums are planned for the site, both for clients, designers and themers. This will a place to discuss issues and ideas and for clients to provide direct feedback.
AdaptiveThemes will also provide support for all themes. Themers and designers must be available for changes should the customer purchase an Extended Services Pack which includes customizing the theme.
As an additional product we will offer Super Premium themes. These are best of breed quality designs that work more like a site-in-a-box and are offered as a limited run. Additionally they'll ship with customizations, installation and configuration and a free copy of Using Drupal by O'reilly.
The Pro Themes Shop will open on August 1st and we hope to have at least a handful of gorgeous themes for sale. We're using Ubercart for the shop and sales stats will be feed to each users profile. Popular themers and designers will get first dibs on the custom projects of which one has already landed on my table - any takers?
Some links:
http://adaptivethemes.com/how-it-works
http://adaptivethemes.com/whats-in-it-for-designers
http://adaptivethemes.com/user/register
Comments
Sweet deal
Cool idea! There are a million design ideas lurking around here somewhere...
Ill dust a few off and upload. Usually there's simply no time to evolve them into templates.
Cheers!
^_^
Cool idea, I think designers
Cool idea, I think designers will definitely be interested in using this since many designers have designs that never made it to coding. Hopefull some popular themes for other CMS scripts like Wordpress will be ported using this service.
Greets from http://www.drupalthemes.biz
I think its possible some
I think its possible some commercial WP designers may come our way, probably private ports to be sold on their own sites, I've had discussions along those lines with one pro WP designer.
We have 28 designers joined up so far, really good going after just a week and a bit. 5 themers have been chosen and we're looking for more, background chatter is that quite a few designs are in the works and will be added over the coming weeks.
A small crowd of core members is already starting to form and together we can really drive the project forward, its important to understand its more like an association of professionals working in collaboration, rather than a traditional "you work for me" sort of company.
Thanks for the feedback, we're looking forward to a bright future.
Hi jmburnz, Interesting idea
Hi jmburnz,
Interesting idea ... we would like to cooperate if possible.
Regards
Raffi Hovhannesian
http://www.psd2drupal.com
...
Hi raffi, sure come on over and signup or skype me "jmburnz".
sure will signup
sure will signup