Techniques for Designing with Drupal 8

Designing for the web is complicated. Endless screen sizes, high user expectations and usability challenges offer up some interesting if not impossible challenges for web designers, especially when wrestling with complex functionality delivered by Drupal. Join this detailed discussion on web design and designing Drupal 8 websites.

Where to start? So often the creative process begins with a blank page. Does the approach to design change when working with Drupal? Drupal is not a blank slate. As designers and themers, we have to consider structures inherent in all Drupal sites like regions, blocks, displays and views. This session will look at specific structures found in every Drupal 8 site and discuss approaches to design that leverage the output that Drupal provides.

With a rich medium like Drupal to work with processes have to change. We’ll explore how the design process fits into the development process. How we can make the design process more agile and how can we incorporate design into a project. We’ll discuss the difference between theming and design and their role in building out a new Drupal 8 site. 

Then we’ll talk about managing all this and how the design process fits into a large development project. What are the responsibilities of the designer? What are their deliverables? We’ll propose a standard list of design deliverables and touch upon style guides, wireframes and mood boards.

We’ll explore some design tools and techniques and how they work with Drupal. Why design websites with photo editing software when there are such great tools like InVision and Zeplin around? Let’s take a look inside a Drupal designer’s toolbelt.

Since creativity is all about invention and inspiration we’ll explore the cutting edge of web design and how future releases of Drupal 8 might shift the way we design websites and how we interact with them.

Objectives

  • Discuss challenges when designing for today’s web

  • Take a close look at common Drupal structures and propose design techniques that work within those structures

  • Demonstrate different design tools like mood boards and style tiles and how to use them when designing for Drupal

  • Review several design processes and how design fits in with building out and developing a Drupal site

  • Address how the design process fits into project management

Target Audience

  • Creatives who like to talk about design

  • Experienced Drupal Themers as well as Web Designers with little or no experience with Drupal

  • Web Designers who want to gain a more technical understanding of Drupal

  • Project Managers who want to understand the challenges when designing with Drupal

 

Experience level: 
Intermediate
Speaker(s): 
Daniel Schiavone
Session Time Slot(s): 
Session Track: 
Front-End Development