An Overlooked Drupal Design Problem
Most of the shared Drupal themes aren't very good and there aren't very many commercial ones. That's what a study shared by Jay Batson pointed out. Jay went on to propose some steps we could take to court better design in the Drupal community. While he made some important points, there is one important point that was overlooked. The issue of crediting designers for their work.
Hostile Land For Designers
Let's be honest. The Drupal community is a hostile land for designers. Drupal.org is nothing to look at (yes, I know that's changing). The drupal web tools, like api.drupal.org, are centered on developers. To contribute a theme you have to know and use CVS. At drupalcon dc designers and themers had to take over BoF rooms to get the space they need.
The Drupal community is anything but warm and inviting to designers. We tend to treat designers like we do fellow developers. We can't do that. They are different. It would be like buying my wife a vacuum for her birthday. Just a bad idea.
Crediting Developers
Right now drupal developers are credited in a variety of ways. If they contribute code there are commit messages. We even keep stats on that. Their contributed modules are tracked on their user pages and you can see how many sites are using their modules. If they contribute to core their usernames are in the commit messages and can get up on the big screen at drupalcon.
If you are lucky enough (is lucky the right word) you can get your name in the MAINTAINERS.txt file for Drupal so everyone can see your name on the project.
As you contribute you build up community cred with the other developers. You make friends. You gain influence.
Difference Between Design and Development
When a developer writes a sweet module, like Views, for a site they can share it back with the community for fame, reputation, and more. The case is quite different for a designer.
If a themer contributes back a base theme like zen, blueprint, or moshpit it's a reusable piece of code like a module. A full design is something you can't share back from a project. If I share a design from a site I've done and people use it my branding status is lowered. It hurts the effectiveness of a site.
So, designs typically can't be contributed back in the same way modules or base themes can be.
Difference between Designers and Drupal Developers
Drupal developers usually want to move up the Drupal Developer food chain. When they contribute back there is an ecosystem of Drupal developers for them to interact with.
This is not the case for designers. There is no flourishing design community. When they go to interact within the design world they do it with the design world at large. Designers aren't interested in having their name in a drupal commit message about a change in the code. They are interested in receiving credit for the design they worked on. Note, a design is different than a theme in this case.
One of the things the Drupal community needs to figure out is how to credit designers for their designs in a way that showcases it the larger design community. This is especially important for drupal core where the drupal 7 version has just 2 designs.
So, this is a call for ideas. How can we do this and do it in an effective way for the design community?
I want to give a special thanks to Leisa Reichelt and Morten for helping me understand this.
Comments
#1 Designer does not equal themer
Another point is a designing and theming are related but different roles. In the Drupal community developers often think of them the same. Designers make images or mockups of a theme. Themers take mockups and making them into functioning Websites and themes using HTML, CSS, Jquery and perhaps Flash in some cases. Themers are still coders. Designers, in my experience, are not interested in touching code for the most part. Very few designers are interested in doing the task of sticking a bunch of code in a phptemplate_preprocess_page function to get additional body classes for taxonomy terms, yet this is a perfectly reasonable thing for a themer to do. Just like a heavy duty Drupal developer often mistakenly think of themers as designers, designers often think of themers as heavy duty back-end coders.
Distinguishing between these roles would go a long way toward helping this situation.
#2 Agreed totally. This issue
Agreed totally.
This issue have been discussed multiple times, however most people who are active on it do not see it that way.
E.g. http://groups.drupal.org/node/16200 constitute of the 20% coders that can take care of themselves.
#3 Building bridges to the design community
Despite significant efforts to reach out to designers, like having the design track at Drupalcon Boston, it is still too hard for Designers to find their way in the Drupal community.
Hostile to designers
We need a designers landing page on Drupal to speak to that role in the community. We need a landing page that addresses the photoshop crowd, and doesn't make the mistake of trying to convince Designers that theming is easy and as designers they can learn to modify templates. Here's an example: http://drupal.org/node/49297 . Designers need to know that Drupal doesn't have to destroy their designs and disappoint their clients.
We need to explain why we don't allow random people to insert design images on Drupal.org (security) and ask them how we can facilitate the conversation. There are nascent efforts to attract designers like design for Drupal and the upcoming design camp in Boston. We need to broadcast that the community is trying to reach out to designers. High profile projects like the Drupal.org redesign weren't just about getting a new design, they were about educating the Drupal development community about the role design plays in our Drupal sites.
Crediting Designers
I think creating a list of designers who are contributing to Drupal core and contributed modules is a great idea.
Making it easy to contribute design
We need a way to allow Drupal.org to embed videos and images so designers can use the tools necessary for a conversation. I'll research how to do this. But I suspect white listing some external image sources Skitch and Video sources like Youtube or Archive.org could help. Suggestions?
Design case studies
Today the case studies on Drupal.org focus on the business and the development of new features, including contributed modules. Projects like Drupal.org redesign and D7UX have brought the design discussion forward. If anyone is interested in writing a design case study for the front page of Drupal.org let me know. I'll work on that case study with them.
Kieran
#4 Great Ideas
Thanks for the thoughts. They are useful.
One of the conversations we've started to have is about a subdomain called design.drupal.org (doesn't exist yet).
For developers we have handbook, CVS, mailing lists, api.drupal.org, and more. The idea is to create a design.drupal.org to facilitate the design tools and design folks the same way other tools work for devs.
We have not taken this discussion to far, yet. Ideas or someone who wants to take ownership of this would be fantastic.
#5 Nice Post!
Nice post - I share the sentiments of this post... while I've created maybe 10 or so original themes (for different sites, mostly they are Zen subthemes), the biggest issue holding me back is the whole CVS/programmer-centric way of contributing themes.
I would love to take a few of my simple themes and convert them into base Drupal themes, but I simply haven't had the time yet to learn how to apply for, use, and maintain a CVS account. I know a little PHP (just enough to get things customized for my site, but not enough to do custom modules/preprocesses... yet), and a little bit of the command line. But getting a theme onto D.o is a lot of work the way it is right now. I wonder if that's what's holding many people back?
#6 It might be helpful to look
It might be helpful to look how Wordpress handles this. They seem to have a thriving theme community.
Added to DrupalSightings.com
#7 Many, I guess, still thinks
Many, I guess, still thinks that drupal is unfriendly for end users. Your grandma can easily run a blog based on wordpress rather than drupal :) The ease of setting up a site may considerably hold designers from contributing. Why they should contribute end users themes, when they think end users barely run drupal. The fear of wasting time makes drupal designers rare or finally endangered. It's for the same reason, I guess, that's why we have abundant starter themes.