So after a few years research, learning, doing, crying, hair pulling, hitting myself in the head with a hammer and a few months worth of group discussion reading I feel that it's time for me to make a move on my asperations to start designing Drupal themes and I need some input from the community, as afterall this idea is for the community.
Basically I've been going through a discussion that started a few years ago and haven't seen any great difference or progression on the subject of getting designers into Drupal, so here's the chance to. One thing i've learnt from my experience of designing with other content management systems is that to really get something people will like, use, download, whatever it needs to be something that has the input of the community as the community knows what the community wants so this is my attempt at doing what people have been talking about for what I can see to have been some time without stepping on anyones toes or causing uneccessary wars with other designers/themers. This isn't a contest or a d@#* measuring exercise, I merely would like to give something back for the efforts that have allowed me to create several successful client sites using Drupal.
What I am rabbiting on about is a contrib theme, that's on the same level design wise as what's on offer to other CMS' which I won't name for fear of being gang-ranted at. Currently the contrib themes on Drupal are half decent, some have more functionality than inspector gadgets swiss army knife but lack creativity and others are the opposite, in some cases the themer has hit the nail on the head and has both "cheer". I am not interested in designing/theming something that allows you to plot a map of how to get from Wales to Japan by sea, what I'm really after is the communities opinion on what themes are potentially missing that are designed for a specific subject or style or what people think would be a good addition to what's already available.
Anything is doable and will be considered(in design terms), the theme will have some form of basic structure/features i.e 3 column, collapsable regions, 960px width, the possibility of additional classes for adding icons to lists etc and be compatible with a few popular contrib modules which will also be something you can request. I had thought about doing this for a base theme but as this is more about design/appearance I'd like to keep my toolset as flexible as possible.
Bare in mind this is an idea/request to start something that could potentially turn into an annual thing if it was successful so please keep your requests sensible, I am a designer after all so my theming/feature implementation skills are limited to custom themes, I still need to study advanced theme rocket science.
Any feedabck/request is appreciated.
Andy