Bringing Design To Drupal

A new movement surfaced at drupalcon DC. It had been bubbling under the surface for some time and it came to a head when 1400 drupalers came together for a week. That movement is Design for Drupal or d4d.

Let's be honest. Drupal isn't pretty out of the box. It's known for it's functionality and community not it's design. An article comparing Wordpress, Joomla, and Drupal put it perfectly when it said,

...Drupal also has the problem that it just doesn't always look that great. I have seen very few websites built in Drupal that look and feel as good as they function. You can especially see this in the theme directory on the Drupal.org website, where there are dozens of these themes built to prove the exact point I just made. It's a shame really, because with all of the development advancements the software has, it would almost be perfect with a stronger usability and design interface.

In the past week I've gotten an opportunity to listen in on the parking lot conversations of the designers and see their desire to contribute to something better. Something that can help us all.

At drupalcon there was an obvious need for more design. The lack of design tracks caused the designers and themers to take over a BoF room all day Friday and get some room for Saturday. Some twitter chatter about the lack of design sessions caused a BoF session asking how we can get more designers involved in drupal (the audio from that is available at http://blip.tv/file/1848508).

On Saturday, designers and themers came together to talk about the state of design in drupal and look to where they can help take it. The session started out with an introduction by everyone present as to who they are and what they are looking for. Below is a video of that and the audio is available at http://blip.tv/file/1866277

This was followed by some great brainstorming sessions, creating a strategy where we would go from here, and some time with core committer Angie Byron where designers and themers shared their view of the world with her.

From here a group of designers, themers, and developers (like myself) have gotten together to help make this happen. There is a group at http://groups.drupal.org/d4d that has been quickly growing. There is an IRC room at #drupal-design on Freenode. There is a twitter hash tag at #drupaldesign. There is a 'needs design review' tag for drupal patches. And, most importantly there is organization, desire, goals, and drive taking form.

If you are interested in helping or just cheering on the effort please stop by the group, hit us up in IRC, or raise your hand in any way you can. We want to work with everyone. The developers have build a rock solid platform to build amazing sites. Now, let's see what the designers can do with it.