The Chosen Ones

web graphical design resources

These are free and are supposed to be usable AS-IS with a PHPCMS for which we provide integration services to make that actually happen:

• d.o, drupaltheme.net, Drupal 6 Themes
• Mediawiki Skins (like this one EG).
• WordPress themes.

These are priced and/or require extension by a proper graphics artist to support a whole application:

• Art Quality single page designs (CZG)   ¹.
• Template World templates   ².

If you know of others we should include here please let us know. See the Flash Resume cube for some high quality graphical treatments I maintained but didn't create.

The relation between graphics and IT is much deeper in my overall work history than the above may indicate.
The stuff above (except the CZG) is free stuff or low cost stuff I can use to build a working theme/skin/look+feel. Here are more links on this in my web:

• My UI/UX Background (pre 2005)
• About Graphic Treatments Generally
• The CL-XSL Strawman

¹ Contact gardener or we can subcontract with your selected one if available.
² Subscription based, you can download while subscribed. Joomla is supported in individual consults. C-六 integrates, Magento community edition and other PHP packages in our FLOW3 AOP based integration framework. We are generally using AOP as an integrative mechanism which has support in varying forms in every major language culture.

To be clear, I'm a programmer, systems integrator, software engineer, whatever, not a graphics artist or visual designer. As of 2011-09, while everything current in my space is arranged and composed by me, I can't even draw but don't see what that has to do with software. As for the role of design in software, my position is same as the Winograd quote in the last link below.

Although I can do the quality of "design" work which you see, and which I without any deprecation whatsover refer to as "superficials", Gyrony is a design freelancer I can partner with if you have a multi-person budget and need this kind of work done. Resource limitations from my focus on software and function mean I am not going to be able to do better than you see in my self-produced space except by collaboration with another such worker. Even Don Knuth had a collaborator (Duane Bibby) that did the illustrations in the TeX Book.

Don't have time for this and am concentrated on software. However to some extent this is a software issue and it's deeply intertwined with software as in drupal or theming systems. The C-六 link shows existing free drupal themes I've adapted in anticipation of more detailed graphical treatments by others.

A still unresolved area of research and interest to me is how to get high quality graphical treatments on dynamic content. When you see a striking high quality web design, it is invariably a static page or small set of pages. Applying a theme to a CMS as is done here in this adaptation of the mediwiki CMS doesn't create a similar impression of art.

See also this and this.

The Chosen One