Forget about posters in museums, and covers of Rolling Stone(age)… Dreaming is ok, but fantases can be dangerous.

In January, WordPress, the famous Open Source blogging and web publishing software maker, announced a new inititatve to get designers involved in improving the overall user interface and user expereice with WordPress.

Dirk+Weiss loves WordPress. It enables our clients to have full control over their content, thus keeping their site relevant and fresh. This is great for customers and search engines. We have seen many iterations of WordPress over the years, and love the improvments made each time.

This initiative also points out that for designers, web publishing is not the same horse has old, static, HTML type sites. In our experience, traditional Graphic Designers always have a bit of hesitation towards the web. Part of this is due to the cumbersome thought of learning programming. In reality, its programming is quite logical. And straight HTML code is so 15 years ago. Standalone HTML has been replaced by newer, server side technologies such as PHP and MySQL. And honestly, these solutions make life easier for clients, designers and programmers, and take less time to develop.

Speaking of development time, lets chat quickly about the value of design in 2010. Remember when designers had hourly rates of $100/hr or more? Good luck getting jobs when telling a client that your rate is that pricey. We believe that value of design has shifted dramatically. Clients favor speed and efficiency over pretty graphics. Now, that does not mean ugly graphics are ok (even though they sell), it simply means that if the design of graphics is necessary, they must be smart and efficient, rather than decorative and fluffy.

So how can graphic designers, that for so long dreaded programming, step up their service offering in 2010? Simple. Offer solutions that require zero code for clients, and damn near minimal code for you, the designer. WordPress is a great example. And when we say minimal code for the designer, we mean CSS only. Don’t know CSS, check out and learn at W3Schools. Its Free.

Designers: Please do not go out and buy a $60 book on making websites, and designing for web. Just ask Google, and watch You Tube. It’s all out there, for free.

Bounce ideas, participate in discussions and collaborations online. Make a great product better. Get Featured. Get Traffic.
http://wordpress.org/development/2010/01/2010-open-source-design/