Design on the Edge of Drupal

SESSION OVERVIEW
Not for the faint-of-heart purist, this session explores radical approaches for pushing the creative envelope with Drupal. Going far beyond Garland and Zen, this talk will cover how to hack themes to create sites that could not look less Drupal.

The session will be part slide show and part case study. We’ll deconstruct a few sites and look at the seemingly impossible task of building them in Drupal.

We’ll also examine Drupal itself from the designer’s perspective, and why it poses special challenges to design professionals. We’ll look at simple ways to make Drupal friendlier and gain more traction in the design community.

TRACK
Design and user experience

AGENDA
Taking inspiration from architecture
* functionalism or free-form?
* spaces that work, spaces that inspire, and spaces that do both

Inside the designer’s brain
* Is it green or is it sage? Choosing color with precision
* Arial or Whitney? Why, it is life-or-death.
* The true art of typography
* Visual languages and how to use them
* What a typical designer would never learn.

Deconstructing sites
* planning a mixed site: Drupal, Flash, and javascript
* Drupal or not Drupal? A pop quiz
* Zen and the art of free form
* Hacking regions and the three-column grid
* Hacking controls

Artifacts from the future
* the Drupal 9 UI

GOALS
Even if you don’t agree with this approach or any of these techniques, it should leave you thinking differently the next time you sit down to design for Drupal.

RESOURCES
Bring a sense of humor and an open mind.