design

Has anybody used Semantic UI for their Drupal site? I just came across this http://semantic-ui.com/ as a possible replacement for Twitter Bootstrap and wanted to see if anybody has any examples. I've been playing around with it some and will post mine when I'm done.

The Design Initiative has three main goals - build a new core theme, build a new collaboration site for designers, and community outreach. The new core theme initiative is well under way and we're tantalizingly close to design.drupal.org becoming a reality. What we need to do now is step up a gear and start thinking about outreach.

To scope this discussion - this is about our new core theme for Drupal 8 and who it will serve, and how they will use it.

Its not possible to design and build something that will suit everyone, so we have been working on narrowing it down to identify who might use our new core theme and what their needs might be.

I have expanded on this and tried to think about skill-sets, constraints, features and what type of sites might they be building.

We need to start thinking and talking about what approaches we're going to take in Drupal 8 with regards to design for mobile.

My own opinion is that we should probably be looking really closely at responsive design and how we might apply or adapt the patterns emerging in that field. The idea of "one web" and a unified design and user experience independent of device appeals to me. I don't want an impoverished mobile experience, so please don't assume what I want to see or do just because I'm on a tablet or handset.

Recently I was lucky enough to have a lengthy discussion with Jane Wells, the lead User Interaction designer for Wordpress. During the call she raised the interesting topic of cross app UI design. If you're not sure what that means let me briefly explain - in short it means that apps like Drupal, Wordpress and Joomla could use the same UI designs or patterns to give site users a consistent UX (user experience).

The Design Initiatives main purpose is to build a new theme for Drupal 8 and as part of this initiative we are preparing a Design Brief. The brief will be part of a "Designers Toolkit" which also includes a set of wire-frames. The brief itself comprises of two parts - a set of documents outlining Drupal core output (to support and clarify the wire-frames) and a Use Case Brief. Its the last bit I want to talk about here and open up discussion on. In essence what should this use case be?

As many of you will know by now the Design Initiative for Drupal 8 is underway. We're going to build a new theme for Drupal 8, however this is not the only goal of the initiative - we have two other goals: provide a collaborative environment for designers and to promote Drupal to the broader design community. In essence we're raising the profile of design and designers in the Drupal community, with a particular focus on Drupal core development.

This is a slightly altered copy of our blogpost. But as g.d.o is a much better place for discussion, it makes sense to repost it here.

Outcomes from a brainstorming session at Design Camp Prague.

Who is a designer?

Well, even trying to define what a designer is needs a consensus. Being the host of this memorable session, I tried to gear it more in the direction of artistic designers that know little or nothing about coding, the most they would know is HTML and CSS, but no PHP (run and hide). It is this group of people that are really good at aesthetics but that hate coding that Drupal sorely lacks. Concerning people that are active in the issue queue, we had a consensus in another session that you cannot count more than four in all of Drupal. (which may be wrong, but it sure feels like this).

I happened upon this and wanted to share. The article mentions Drupal still playing second fiddle to WordPress :) but makes note that the designs are inspirational and could sway someone towards Drupal over other CMS's

Here is the article http://flashjourney.com/2009/11/15/44-marvelous-sites-powerd-by-drupal/

Currently I am experimenting with something I dubbed 'Design modules', and I would like to contribute this idea back to the community and bounce off some ideas. Please feel free to give constructive feedback on this, and whether I am heading in the right direction. This is not to be considered a definitive write up by any means, but just one designer's journey in getting to learn how to design in Drupal, and where needed improve this process.

Short background and case study