Stop Crying You Babies

If any of you know who I am and what I usually say, I try to maintain some decent levels of class and sophistication while expressing my opinion or view about a particular subject because I know what backlash is, however, today I will allow myself to be rather unrestrained. Today I shall be attacking the loud voice of supposed web designers who are bitching about the difficulties of designing for Drupal or any other CMS that exists. This is the movement of the future

Things to know about me, I am not the God’s gift to webdesign, I am not a PHP developer by trade, I do not claim to be the last word in any of the advances to technology, but I have been using these CMS platforms for about 4 years and I think I have a reasonable idea about what is possible and how you let the medium be your guide when working in web. Plus after I am done bitching I will attach some resources for you.

I have been designing and developing in the web for quite some time now and I don’t think that there is any reason for anyone who wants to start, or has started, to ever wince at the thought of using the tools that are available to them. Having been in the middle of several debates and pushes to change the standards for various parts of Drupal, I have heard this unified cry from the “designers” that PHP is scary and that they should have to worry about it. STFUYFB! I started out with the chicken-shit designer method of copying pasting and re-wrapping existing code in divs to get it to my bidding, and it worked. My level of impact was really low at that time but then I began to copy functions and edit them to get the results that I wanted. From that moment on the dynamics of what I was doing changed. There was no longer a fear that the white screen would kill all my work.

Of course you won’t know everything to start with. But you can go about learning these things in a way that is tailored to your style. I like videos and hands on tutorial instruction. The more I physically perform an action the more I connect that action with its purpose. Some of my friends just read through the books and they totally get how to accomplish these things. Different strokes for different folks. But saying that you can’t understand or learn something means that either you are incompetent or you refuse to allow yourself to learn.

Ugly Garland is no longer an excuse, bitches! Every CMS starts with the ugliest pre-installed theme that could be possibly packaged with it for 2 reasons; 1. This is what the developers were using while developing and or 2. The developers didn’t have a designer to create a decent starter theme with. All complaints about Drupal’s boxiness to me is white noise. As designers, we (you and I) have the power to create something that can be free and airy or cramped and claustrophobic. Your art style, be it minimalist or texture crazy, can work in any arena. Our responsibility is to create something that fits the purpose and medium it will be presented in.

If you design for print, you need to know what can be accomplished and how to use the press/paper/inks/etc to accomplish it. Know your tools or start learning about them so that you can create the results that you want. Don’t blame the medium for your lack of understanding. (X)HTML, CSS, Javascript and PHP are now the foundations for open source web-design and development. If you don’t have any concept of what these things are or even a vague idea of how they work together to create a website, then you either need to find out about it or STOP DESIGNING FOR THE WEB. You arrogant lazy assholes that keep saying how much you don’t like webdesign because its too restrictive, please stop bidding against me. You are using up my creative air and its really annoying.

Sure, there are many things that can become better and in the case of the open source world, it is the designers and developers that dictate that change. Voice your opinion and help create solutions. The web is full of bitching.

As for your growth here are some basic things to consider;

Design Resources: 960grid, webdesignledger, smashingmagazine, tutsplus, drupal, wordpress, alistapart, w3schools

If you are ready to take of that summer dress and get on board with the rest of us;

Development Resources: drupal api, wordpress codex, PHP

Best of luck.

Zach “attack”

The Seven Principles of Web Design

As explained by magicians Penn & Teller:

URLs are Penn & Teller’s “switch” — it’s well understood that I can switch elements just by pointing to a link, never-you-mind clicking! And with AJAX, we have a complete browser within a browser for switching out content. And the kicker? The term AJAX was coined by Jesse James (Garrett)! So, you know that deception is involved!

Please add your ideas on the correlations between in the comments!

The Switch

Without a doubt, one of my single largest frustrations is communicating with print designers who are suddenly webdesigners. Not to say that all who have crossed the digital chasm are so difficult to deal with but there have been some terribly blinding cases in which the designers in question, truly had no grasp on what they were trying to accomplish.

Admittedly we come from the soup. We started out with table layouts and bad coloring and then moved our way through all of these fossil technologies into the glory of grid based, CSS design. And I give much praise to the foundations of design which are most certainly rooted in print. But many times these designers think that some how the mediums are joined at the hip. Not the case.

So, instead of going on and on about how much I dislike the efforts of print designers in the web space let me give out some advice and direction.

If you are thinking about transitioning to the web do your homework.

What do I mena by this? I am suggesting that you go to where all the hip designers are hanging out and see what they are into. By studying the style of today you will have a good barometer for whether or not you are able to design at the same level.

Also, read about the current best practices for technology. The page at a time web design is not really as effective as it once was and has been replaced by database driven websites. For good resources you should check out Smashing Magazine or Webdesign Ledger

For heavens sake, don’t use a thousand different gradients! The web needs to be lightweight as well as engaging. This can be a challenge for anyone who really likes to take advantage of the tools in Photoshop. Think about your end user. In most cases they will not care as much about the aesthetic as they will the over-all functionality of a site. This form follows function mentality will help you when determining the sizes for text, placement of navigation and ergonomics for guided calls to action.

Also. please watch your fonts. A lot of print designers are totally married to many different fancy fonts. At the moment the web cannot render most of them natively. They require special treatment. So, please save your poor development team the brain damage and use the fonts that come on every computer. A great place to do that is at TypeChart. Believe me, I love type as much as the next guy, but the web doesn’t seem to show love quite the same way back.

Use exact measurements in your layouts. Don’t leave little one or two pixel lines over hang out anywhere. This is a nightmare for anyone trying to take your design and turn it into a theme. You may not have any reason to worry about it, but the developers don’t know whether it is an accident or not. Specificity is really important. Also, using a web standard grid such as the one you will find at 960.gs will help you organize your design in a way that is easier on your development team.

Study some code. This is one of the biggest things that can help you as a designer understand what you team can and can’t do before they throw a design back at you and say “NO!” We are not looking for mastery here, but a clear understanding of reasonable functionality. If you walk up to your team and ask them about it, I am sure they will emphatically bombard you with information.

In general, if you are making the transition, please try to respect the effort and team work that designers and technologists have been fostering by making the internet a place that has both visual and vicerel interactivity.

Sincerely

Zach