Presentations

I have given 60+ talks and keynotes in four continents (Asia, Europe, North America, and Oceania), speaking on topics like component design, style-guide-driven development, agile, information architecture, CSS, PostCSS, Sass, and responsive design.

— Paris

Making Drupal Dance: Techniques for Beautiful, Core-worthy Designs

conference: Drupalcon Paris 2009

For too long the Drupal community has lamented the lack of high-quality themes that are freely available. And there has been an increased worry about this with the imminent arrival of Drupal 7. But the solution to this problem is much simpler than we’ve ever thought. We need learn how to communicate with the Design community and make Drupal dance!

Designers fighting Developers in a Drupal cage match
— Washington D.C.

How to Kill Bluemarine: New Core Themes for Drupal 7

conference: Drupalcon DC 2009

Drupal 6 has a new theming layer that is wonderfully flexible and cool. And, yet, the themes that come bundled with Drupal 6 are the same old, boring ones we’ve had for a very long time.

But now we have a plan! We’ve outlined the steps we need to take in order to kill Blue Marine. During this session, we’ll present the current state of our plan, outline the quick steps we’ll need to make Drupal easier to theme, and discuss how to engage the larger CSS and Design community.

The current state of our Drupal 6 core themes: 75% themes that suck, 25% Garland
— New Orleans

Designing with Drupal

conference: Do It With Drupal: New Orleans 2008

Drupal theming has long been seen as a dark art. There are many Drupalisms such as CSS class names, XHTML structure, and PHP knowledge which web designers should be aware of before embarking on a Drupal project. John Wilkins is a CSS ‣ master and the maintainer of Drupal’s respected Zen theme framework. This session will be a must for designers or anyone who has struggled with CSS.

Designing for Drupal: Do It With Drupal — A 3 Day Seminar New Orleans, LA December 10-12, 2008
— Denver, online

Zen and the Art of Theming and the power of Base Themes

camp: Drupal Camp Colorado

The Zen theme is both a good learner’s theme for beginners and a powerful launch pad for advanced themers.

In this session we’re going to be discussing “The Power of Base Themes” and why even Theming-Fu Masters would be wise to use a base theme (even if they decide to roll their own.) We’ll also discuss some of the goodies that make Zen a flexible, pluggable, well-documented, feature-rich, minimally-styled, well-structured, CSS-powered über–theme.

Zen and the Art of Theming and the Power of Base Themes