Design

What CVS does to (some) designers

There’s been a lot of talk lately about how Drupal designers shouldn’t have to learn CVS. Nothing new to see here, really — just the same tired, self-fulfilling arguments about how much CVS sucks, how developers also hate using it, and how designers shouldn’t be expected to learn something so… technical.

Note: This HOWTO covers Drupal 6.x.

By default, Drupal adds an .error class to the form element itself: textarea, select, input, and so on. Sometimes, that’s not good enough. Maybe a client needs the label’s color changed — or a big, red border encompassing both the label and input elements.

This can be achieved by overriding theme_form_element() to add an error class to div.form-item, the div that wraps all elements in a form.

Photo by Franco Folini on Flickr (CC-Attribution-ShareAlike)

Despite being held on a Saturday, more than 15 dedicated Drupalers showed up for Day 4 of the San Francisco Drupal.org redesign sprint. Here’s what was achieved.

After many months of deliberation, we’ve decided to totally rebrand Four Kitchens. It was a tough decision — there’s so much work that needs to be done — but we decided, in the end, that our firm needed a new look.

Our goals for the rebranding are:

• Identify Four Kitchens as a leading Drupal consulting firm.
• Raise awareness of our design skills and portfolio. (We’re not just scalability experts!)
• Create an iconic brand that associates the Four Kitchens with quality, respect, and community involvement.

Please check out our ideas below. Any feedback is welcome. We really need your help!

Four Kitchens logo: version 1

Inspiration: Building a website is like reading a book. First, you ride your fixed-gear bike to a locally owned, vegan bookstore and pick out something about World Trade Organization-sponsored coups. Then you turn the book over to see how much it costs. Finally, you pedal home — uphill — and buy it on Amazon in a hot minute.

BarCampAustin 4 graphics have arrived, and they are totally rad. Congrats all around to the fine folks who made them happen.

DJ Dillo: BarCampAustin 4 logo

Assignment: New business cards for our staff.

Goals: A clean, professional, and friendly design with room to write on. (People like to make notes on business cards — namely, when and where they met that person.)

Here’s a taste of what you’ll be getting at DrupalCon DC.

DrupalCon DC swag

The stickers and button were designed by Four Kitchens. Development Seed very graciously printed and paid for the buttons. Thanks, Development Seed!

Just for kicks, here are some DrupalCon “campaign buttons” we cooked up while brainstorming T-shirt ideas. We’re releasing them under the GPLv3, so feel free to use `em as you see fit!

We’ve been busy preparing submissions for the DrupalCon DC T-shirt contest. Here’s what we’ve come up with so far.

See more snazzy designs »

These icons were originally created to correspond with session tracks for the Drupalcon Szeged 2008 conference. They didn’t end up being used, but that doesn’t mean we’re going to forget about them. Now you can download and use these hot icons for your own Drupal-related events, projects, and websites. These icons are released under the GPLv3 so they are yours to use, modify, and rerelease.

Download the Drupal topic icons pack (1.5MB)