Drupal-Aware Design: Techniques for Better Themes

Between design and Drupal theme we change gears dramatically in process and thinking. As designers, we craft our work with wowing users in mind, and as themers, we strive to architect the design and make it pop. We can better unify these approaches to save time and work better. Drupal is adept at making virtually any design look great. What can we achieve in design, both individually and as a community? How can we build diverse designs seamlessly without a hitch along the way? We'll talk about how to improve every step of a process, from prototypes to wireframes. We'll discuss resolving complications like handovers in markup and themes that, due to a design's particularities or a time crunch, end up hacky and impossible to extend. We'll also dwell briefly on important ideas like accessibility and semantics, all while creating Drupal-ready designs and themes that perform perfectly across the board!

Here's a brief summary of what we'll tackle:

• Some design principles, including Drupal's
• Drupal-aware: Design with Drupal, not for Drupal
• One design, many layout possibilities
• Thinking about Drupal's structure and markup
• How to write an awesome theme
• Drupal code standards and conventions
• Contributing good themes
• To Drupal and beyond: new horizons

This session is geared toward designers with some HTML/CSS background and theming beginners. We will also work with a little painless PHP.