Decorating, problem solving and background textures
When I hired Top Notch Themes to give me a shiny new design for my site earlier this year, I completely fell in love with the textured background that it features. In the latest Site Building Extravaganza site (only available to participants at this time) I got a great background texture from my designer, Iva. A number of the participants have been inverting the colours on the background. It's amazing how little it takes to dramatically change the tone of your site.
I've been collecting sites of background patterns and textures and tweeting them for my friend Jeff. (He collects digital ephemera and my goal is to force him to buy another computer to store it all on.) I recently shared a few with my announcement list:
- Zen Textures
- Lost and Taken
- Argyle Patterns (I've been trying to convince another friend that argyle isn't dead)
- BgPatterns
- Subtle Patterns
- Everyday Icons (tiling background patterns)
- Minty Green Web Treats
Jeffrey Zeldman (different Jeff) says that bad design simply is decoration and that good design is problem solving. (He's speaking at DIWD this year, you should go see him speak and either laud his brilliance or throw popcorn.)
We often complain there aren't enough good themes for Drupal. Have we got too many themes that simply decorate the screen? Or do our themes solve problems for themers but fail to decorate? Are we lacking problem solvers? Or, when you are trying to solve a generic problem with a generic theme, is it impossible to do much more than throw a background onto a design and hope for the best?
Let me know what you think...and in the mean time, I'll be looking for new background patterns to send to my friend Jeff.
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Comments
15 July, 2011 - 01:32
Anonymous
i found a site not only of background patterns http://www.colourlovers.com/pattern/. i like it.
15 July, 2011 - 05:53
Andy Britton
Some good questions, most of which I think are being solved by the Design Initiative.
For designers(in the visual sense) it's difficult to contrib "good" themes as there isn't really a system to do so plus to build themes you need to be able to know how the theme layer works and want to take on more of a frontend developer role. Personally I've been using Drupal for 2 years, I can build custom themes but at a level where I can make things look how I want, ask me to code something like a base theme and i'm lost but that's because I am a designer not a developer. When the design initiative concludes and the new design.drupal.org site is up and running this will make collaborating and contributing alot easier for designers and I think a rise in good themes will be seen. There is just a lack of a means at the moment.
In terms of what JZ debates with bad design, I believe bad design is a lack of visual communication. I don't personally see stripping away decoration for every design to be the best way to problem solve although I don't disagree with the statement as a whole, there are times when a design should engage a user where the "decoration" forms part of the content so I look at each design differently as every designer should. But there are plenty of examples of unecessary decoration as much as there are examples of a lack of creativity.
15 July, 2011 - 07:08
Robert D
Yes, design is problem solving. You seem to understand well on engineering aspect.
But there're creativity aspect, Brand identity, brand recognition, visual communication and usability is also problem solving too.
Then, there're always 2 sides of design aspect, not one. And when someone not be able to tackle both and balance of these aspects, that's not a good design practice. And I see many people missed the point about creativity aspect is not in the scope of design.
Anyway, decoration is not design itself but a good concept, meaningful and problem solving decoration is design.
Anyway, what the 'sewing' and fabric pattern and bird logo on this website means? They're more like decoration as you stated to me because it seem not related to your business service/product. Apologized if these decorations are intentional, they're beyond me to understand what problem they're try to solve?
Robert
15 July, 2011 - 09:39
emmajane
@anon: thanks for the background patterns. I'd forgotten about that site.
@Andy Britton: I think it will be interesting to see how the collaboration changes. I have found it exceptionally difficult to get designers to contribute designs. On many occasions I've offered designers to convert their design files into free themes for the community. In two years of offering at DrupalCons, in private communications and on my announcement mailing list I've had fewer than a handful of designers even respond to me. I'm not holding my breath that the initiative can overcome this--so I continue to make my offer in the mean time.
@Robert D: You'll need to do a bit of research on who I am to find out what the theme is all about. ;)
15 July, 2011 - 11:36
Robert D
Ha ha! I see now, it come from things you love. So I see now that this business is just another aspect of yourself, things base on you. You are brand of this business. And people who know you, which I think is your target customers, would instantly recognized it uniqueness.
And your insight about @Andy Britton is interesting. It's bread and butter for individual Drupal designers, which seem to not systemetic their business or their business still not yet established.
I can understand that if we need some designers to provides free themes, it would be from those premium theme shops because they have a lot designs. They would feel like to provides some of them for free to get exposed and traffics from most reliable Drupal sources.
I can recommended contact (and maybe Drupal.org itself can do partner with new BizConnect stuff):
adodis.com
themesnap.com
joomlart.com
rockettheme.com
soopertheme.com
antsin.com
etc.
Some of them already provided open-sources theme already, but not on Drupal website. And to get things going, there need to be some business competition to drive it. And those theme shops that provided Drupal theme but have business background on Wordpress, Joomla know how to marketing to small-medium end user which is not the target of Drupal designer much in the past due to low demands. I would like o see more free out-of-the box themes which are well structure and visually appeal for small business too, and give high priced theme shop like topnotchthemes.com, customize theme shop, etc. to really delivered more on creative aspects. And community would benefit as a whole, because a lot small Drupal site will look up-to-standard when compare to others, even a big site.
John
16 July, 2011 - 14:36
Andy Britton
@emmajane I think if there really are the designers using Drupal that get talked about they'll come out of the wood work, if there's a means for designers to contribute I can't see any reason not to as freebie's are getting more and more popular as a way of exposing their work, premiumpixels.com is an example.
If your still looking for designs to turn into contrib themes then by all means I can do something for you, feel free to email me if that's somethign you'd be interested in.
@Robert D/John
"It's bread and butter for individual Drupal designers, which seem to not systemetic their business or their business still not yet established."
I don't really understand what that is supposed to mean but comparing the contrib themes from other CMS to Drupal it's pretty clear that the premium stores are in the minority of contrib themes, Drupal generally needs more designers using/designing for it which is the issue.
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