Posted by kenwest on September 29, 2010 at 1:53am
I'm posting this as a 'discussion' rather than as a 'job' as we are not at yet at that stage. My hope is that I could get some input on how best to proceed.
I manage the website for the City Bible Forum and I've created a Design Brief (attached) which I've sent to some graphic designers that we've worked with in the past. None of those who've responded have any experience with Drupal themes.
My questions are...
* What's the best way to develop a theme for a small-scale job like this? [post a job on this forum? send a PSD file to a theme factory?]
* How do graphic designers and theme developers work together? [I'm assuming it's a two-way process because what's desirable is not always practical]
Thanks,
Ken West
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| Design brief.pdf | 22.37 KB |
Comments
No Brief
I can't see any brief attached, but generally it depends on what you're trying to achieve and its maintainability / flexibility in the future.
"Theme Factory" type services often can kick out something for you fairly quickly / cheaply. However, often they are not providing very good quality in terms of html/css for web standards / semantics. This can affect things like site performance, SEO/Accessiblity, and can make it very hard/confusing when you need to add something to the design/theme 6 months down the line (possibly costing you more down the line).
Working with a custom theme developer will provide you (hopefully) a better quality result in terms of html/css, and ensure you are doing thing "the drupal way". This will make things much easier to maintain the site/theme as things evolve over time. However, building a custom theme is going to be more expensive upfront. Communicating between the designer and the themer are definitely important and I would suggest using an approach like: http://www.chapterthree.com/blog/nica_lorber/design_drupal_template_appr... to ensure a really good result. Wherever possible, this is the approach we use.
--Ryan
Ryan Cross
Drupal Development Services
ProjectPier project management and collaboration software
Caught with 'no brief'
I've re-attached the brief.
Thanks for your comment, Ryan!
After review
After looking over your brief, it sounds like you are probably also looking for someone to do the site build for you as well as just delivering the theme. In light of this, my suggestion would be to split the design component from the site build/theming components.
Get the graphic design completed, with the knowledge of where the design will be implemented (and have some technical insight/review during the design process). Then move ahead with the site build and theming. These can sometimes happen in parallel if managed well, and I would get the designer to include a bit of extra time in their quote to do tweaks/revisions on the graphics as needed during the implementation which can usually be kept to a minimum if a good process is followed.
Happy to help further if you need. You can reach me through my contact page, or attend the next Drupal user group meeting - there have recently been some other people getting help for civicrm as well.
--Ryan
Ryan Cross
Drupal Development Services
ProjectPier project management and collaboration software
There is no myth about Drupal
There is no myth about Drupal design.
You ask a designer to create a PSD design. Then you ask a Drupal developer to build a Drupal site, then you call a Drupal themer to apply the PSD design to that Drupal site. That's all.
Symphony Themes
Reponsive Mobile Theme Provider