I would like to start a series of design threads/ideas/discussions over the course of the next few months and want to get some feedback on if you guys would welcome/participate in such things. We have a small knit community here at the Xion forums and it's growing as more and more people see the potential.
As we all love to Skin for/with Xion and Xion has made skinning a much less daunting task to create skins I feel that we should also discuss design. This won't be a class type thing, (I'm no teacher) but I do want to learn more about design and design principles to further knowledge and create better interfaces. Just because Xion makes it easier to skin doesn't mean we should think less of designing UI's
This would probably work well as a workshop type thing (but is open for discussion), for example where we have a goal and we discuss thought processes, ideas, workflow, creation, design, design principles etc...
Those participating would also each work on the same goal idea and we compare the end results, not looking for ego stuff here!!, anyone with ego issues might as well stop reading this now, this is for people who want/would like to learn more and discuss how they ended up with the results they achieved and if we as a group can learn from each others techniques/thought processes/skillsets in creating Skins/following design principles etc..
of course as a community its open for discussion, I would like to think I can encourage discussion on topics such as this
I'll bosh this up as a poll initially, if you want to also add topics that are of interest to you or you would like to see something covered then please add them
I'll discuss this idea further with Cliff but I'm sure you guys would like to get involved somehow with this idea, so get posting
Only 8, surely we have more people interested? Very soon will start the series, will try to keep things brief so there is room for discussion, we will start off with some simple idea/concepts and discuss the pros/cons, there will also be a workshop for the 1st discussion where we all have a go at the topic in question
we will be discussing and also doing some workshops in the following:-
design ideas/principles, shape, layout, sketches, textures, coloring (including colour schemes such as triadic, monochrome, analogous, paired complements etc...), lighting, perspective, shadowing, ps tips/tricks plus many more
I'd also like to point out that the discussions/ideas/workshops are also part of the community so if anyone wants to discuss anything in particular or has any advice on improving this idea as we go along your more than welcome, it will be down to you guys providing feedback on what we could do to help or provide more information on etc..
we won't be able to please everyone but will try so that everyone has the chance to get something out of this
hopefully after say 2 thread discussions we can get a feedback on some general information of say
- did you learn anything you did not already know
- was the information comprehensive
- was it a friendly atmosphere/experience
- would you like more and what could we do to make it better
there will be more questions but generally trying to get a feel of how we can improve upon the previous ideas inline for the next batch, i think by a couple of these sessions it should be clear to everyone the direction it sort of takes initially but it is open to the community to shape this course so to speak so that everyone gets something out of it
haha.. very nice futurama reference there. I also think it's gunna be a good idea. I mean if anything this will at least reinforce the community even moreso than it is at it's current state right now.
I like the idea and I have no problem sharing what I know. 