Way back in September 2010 I launched the Design 4 Drupal Core (D4DC) project - the initial goal was to define a better process for adding new themes to Drupal core. This grew out of the Drupal 7 process which was essentially a code race between Bartik and Corolla. It was clear to me this process could be improved. In the commercial world we always select the design first (as opposed to an entire theme), so I started making the argument that any new core theme would have to be selected based on the design - then coded into theme.
Putting design first allows any designer to get involved, i.e. they don’t need to know any code, and don’t really need to know anything about Drupal at all. This is fundamental to the Design Initiative goals - to remove roadblocks for design contributors.
I knew we needed the design first, but I now had to dream up a way of getting that design, making sure it was good enough for core and finally make sure that everyone involved with the process came out a winner. So while our #1 goal is to add a new theme to Drupal 8, the #2 goal is to define the process for making that happen - one that we can use now and for future design projects for Drupal. Therefore the process needed as much time, effort and thought as the design itself - which means I can’t do this alone, its too big.
When Dries announced the Core Initiatives concept at Chicago DC I knew straight away this was the vehicle I needed to make this happen. I opened the New theme in Core issue and fired off an email to Dries to propose this as a core initiative. Together Dries and I have worked together to prepare this launch and I am very happy to announce that the Design Initiative is now a full Drupal 8 Core Initiative and we will be adding a new theme to Drupal 8!
The most important phase of the initiative is going to be the Design Selection Phase. During this phase designers will get the opportunity to work with some of the top people in Drupal including those working in UX, accessibility, front end development, other Drupal designers and of course you - in essence we are going to create a collaborative space for designers where they can not only showcase their work, but learn about what it means to design for Drupal. For any designer looking to get involved with Drupal this is an invaluable opportunity and resource - and most importantly this is open to all designers, not just those with some drupal knowledge, we want to actively encourage designers from other communities to get involved, if only as a learning experience.
The goal is to build up a body of very high end designed-for-drupal website designs and from these works select the next core design. Beyond the core theme selection we hope to involve many front end themers who might also select a design and build this into a contrib theme, or simply leave them as a portfolio piece.
Shortly we will release our master plan and begin working on the Establishment Phase of the initiative which really means getting everything we need ready for the design phase. In due course we’ll be opening issues for discussion and looking for community members to take on the long list of tasks needed to make this all happen.
There’s been quite a bit of discussion about this and I’d like to take a moment to thank the people who have been working on this behind the scenes: Dries, Angie Byron (D7 co-maintainer), Bojhan Somers (UX), Leisa Reichelt (UX), Morten.dk (designer, themer), Roy Scholten (UX and design), Mike Gifford (accessibility), Jacine Luisi (front end developer), Jarek Foska (themer), Jurriaan Roelofs and Lewis Nyman (front end developers) and Andy Britton (designer). There has also been some discussion with Jeff Eaton on how we might tie in findings from the Snowman project, so thanks Jeff.
We’ve assembled a small team to manage the day to day operations of the initiative - these people form the nucleus of the Design Initiative team: Morten.dk (Geek Royale, front end megastar and all round good guy), Bojhan (freelance interaction designer, UX geek), Lewis Nyman (Capgemini UK, Frontend lead, RMG project) and Jurriaan Roelofs (One Shoe, Sooperthemes, front end developer) and myself as Initiative Lead.
There’s a lot of work to be done to realise the initiative goals and we need you, anyone interested in getting involved can visit this issue on Drupal.org http://drupal.org/node/1087784 which for now we will use as a meta issue. Some time in the next few weeks we’ll setup a blog and the new Design Initiative site and of course I’ll be keeping everyone updated with regular tweets and posts, both here and in the Design 4 Drupal group.
I am absolutely thrilled to be working on this initiative and save a special thanks to Dries for his trust and vision to back this for Drupal 8. You can read Dries initiative release post here: http://buytaert.net/design-for-drupal-8
Comments
with snowman +1
Congrats! The snowman project seems a great fit for this!
The continuation of the Core Themes initiative
Congratulations, Jeff! I’m really happy that you are taking the reins where I left off with Drupal 7. Getting the crufty themes out of Drupal core and getting Stark and Bartik into D7 was a long haul, which was started back in December 2008 around a dinner table at the first Do It With Drupal conference.
There were so many people who helped along the way its difficult to remember them all. (I'll have to make a list of them soon!)
“How?” was the challenge we faced with the Drupal 7 core theme initiative, balancing designers understandable aversion to spec work with Open Source's integral model of giving away code. The technique I tried to steer people to was to partner a designer with a themer. While both were giving away their wares, they both fully understood that at the end of the process they would, at the very least, have a kick-ass contrib theme. And I urged other partnerships to start up as I started one with Jen Simmons. I outlined that strategy in presentations at Drupalcon DC and Drupalcon Paris.
I look forward to seeing how you improve upon that model.
One additional challenge that we faced in Drupal 7 was simultaneously improving the default markup in the entire Drupal core code base. I'm glad the Stark theme was able to make those changes possible. The markup in D7, which is still far from perfect, is vastly improved over D6.
One point I must object to above is your statement that “the Drupal 7 process which was essentially a code race between Bartik and Corolla.” That is totally wrong. Again, the model was code collaboration in partnership-based projects. It was never a race of Bartik vs. Corolla. If Corolla’s code had been ready for Drupal 7 core it would be standing next to Bartik on D7’s Appearance page today. Corolla’s design was awesome!
I do hope you improve the “criteria for core themes”. That’s one aspect that was not formalized until much too late in the process and was probably the biggest factor in Corrolla not being ready enough for D7.
Cheers!
Agreed
Yes “the Drupal 7 process which was essentially a code race between Bartik and Corolla.” is too reductionist and ignores earlier work, I suppose it's what it felt like near the end of the pre-core-commit phase when everyone was rushing patches and code at both themes. I think the main thing we want to do different is choose the design first and worry about hard core theme coding later.
Ultimately what we want are people keen and enthusiastic to be involved with Drupal design. I'm passionate about design and Drupal and the chance to combine the two and do it for core is just awesome - I'm very proud we can put design on the map for Drupal 8, in a similar way we put UX and accessibility on the map for Drupal 7.
I've done quite a few rounds with lots of designers talking about this process and many are very keen to be involved which gives me a lot of confidence that we'll not only succeed but do a great job of it as well. It also helps we have a long cycle, so more time to get it right. What happened in Drupal 7 was most certainly a precursor, removing the old cruddy themes and pioneering a new way do doing things, some things didn't go so well and we can learn from that.
One thing about Corolla though, it did have pretty good code, what it lacked was a decent independent code review and an RTBC which I couldn't give because I worked on it - wich kind of help fuel some of the ideas we have this time around - thats its near impossible to review and RTBC an entire theme - being way too much work for one person (all the cross browser testing and so on etc etc).
What are the criteria desired in a new theme?
I take it (perhaps wrongly or prematurely?) that you aim, not to add a beautiful base theme building tool (like an Omega or Fusion or AT or acquia theme building tool...) but rather a finished/set design for...some particular end use or range of end uses? Which end uses will it serve and how will they be chosen? How much flexibility vs simplicity do you want? How much flexibility through the theme settings vs CSS?
I don't actually understand why you would want to leave theming/coding questions for later. I mean, I do understand about just wanting to get designers into the process without them worrying about the Drupal part of it...but we are adding a core theme to Drupal after all...one that will presumably be used by thousands of people for various web sites...so it seems like it would be better to think about how to design for that use case from the beginning. Otherwise, we might end up with a beautiful design that is not as flexible or useful to as wide a range of users as it could be.
If I as a designer know that I am designing for Drupal core, with all of Drupal's theme layer potential, rather than submitting a design with a set palette or layout, I might submit a set of palettes and a range of layout options, font sets, etc. In essence, a base theme but one that comes with "finished" skins...that has great documentation showing all, or many at least, of those major "skin" choices so it's not just left up to the imagination as it is with many base themes now out there, and is really easy to configure. But current base theme technology/code is (among all the major existing ones) developing and changing so fast that it would be counter-productive to commit to core, wouldn't it? and you couldn't put a sub-theme into core that depends on a contrib base theme, could you? so...
...
Let me frame what I mean about waiting a bit for the theme discussions - in reality we're talking weeks, in fact they have already started in the issue queues some weeks and months ago but lack real focus because we didn't have confirmation of this initiative until now.
The use case is a fundamental discussion that will take place, in public, with strong community involvement - its not something we can lay out and say here you go, the community would not buy into that and its important we have total transparency throughout the process. The use case, drupal branding and other factors will drive the brief. Its very important we get this right so we're concentrating on this first - the theme can support this (in terms of code, features etc), in whatever way it requires.
Your ideas regarding a set of skins with configuration options is not off the table in my book, others might feel different, certainly we need to define the requirements over the next couple of weeks. I really can't see us going as far as something like one of the really advanced base themes, but I personally would not be against there being some theme settings in there.
So to answer your question - the criteria is yet to be worked out and its very high on our agenda.
Congrats
This is a great idea.
Core theme requirements
Forgot to mention the URL for this in my previous comment: Core theme requirements. We should build upon them.
Congrats!
Congrats Jeff! Will it be based on a self-standing theme, or will it be AdaptiveTheme-based?
...
Well I think this will be stand-alone theme, perhaps with some nice features, I can't see us using any particular framework (other than a grid maybe) - I would like to see some theme settings to provide end users with options and flexibility, but none of the contrib themes are really suitable imo - they're mostly too generic and for core we probably want something that just solves a set of very specific requirements.
Awesome
Couldn't happen to a nicer newly-married bloke ;)
I'm looking forward to seeing how this develops, and helping wherever I can, Jeff!
YES!
Thank you, Jeff (and you too, John), for being one of the great bridge builders between Drupal designers and developers. I would love to see more designers excited about Drupal, getting value out of Drupal, and contributing to Drupal. I'm very happy you'll be putting your talent and energy towards this. Go big. One of my goals for D8 is for the theme system to make sense to those who need to use it. It's gotten better with every version of Drupal so far, and there's no reason for that to stop. So, as you attract contributors to this initiative, especially ones who are new to Drupal, please remind them that as long as it's before D8 code freeze, if there's something about the theme system that's limiting them, they can use the issue queue to push for changes.
Admin theme
Wow, sounds great. Any thoughts on trying for a new admin theme as well for D8?
Seven for D8 and Mobile!
We're definitely going to learn from D7 and improve the Seven theme for Drupal 8. I think a major focus for our admin theme in D8 will be making it work for mobile :)
Congrats
This initiative is a great step, and starting this early is not only smart but making a statement about the importance of this issue for the community, which makes me very happy :)
The team work on Bartik was great, I'm sure this is going to be even better.
great
Rally great news.
And I must say that I'm really impatient to see results :-)