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View Full Version : Converting a PSD design to a WordPress theme. This is backwards and over kill.



Harold Mansfield
02-06-2013, 02:17 PM
I see and get requests all of the time for people looking for someone to take what is basically a drawing or Photoshop design, and "convert" it into a WordPress theme.
To me this is overkill for 2 reasons:


Most times they haven't actually done anything except create some pretty pictures with thier colors and logo. Not any specific functionality requests that can't be done with any of a million plug ins, nor have they created a layout that can't be found in existence already.
There is no such thing as "converting" a drawing into a WordPress theme. What you really mean is you need someone to code a theme with these colors and logo from the ground up.

9 times out of 10 what they have is simple enough to convert the colors of an existing theme.

For some reason when I see this it really irritates me and they would be better served and save a ton of time and money by just contacting a WordPress person FIRST to see what may already exist and can just be personalized with a few CSS changes, swapping some icons and the right images.

"Oh, you want Facebook connect? Yeah, that's so difficult that you needed to draw it. A sidebar on the home page? Wow, it's a wonder no one has ever thought of that. Thanks for drawing the sharing icons, that's going to take weeks of development".

I had a call today and the guy actually asked me "How long will it take you to match the colors?". I sent him the exact color codes back in about 10 seconds. What year do people think it is? Why don't they just pick up the phone and discover that it's not 1997 anymore?

I think too many people waste money in this area by assuming they need to reinvent the wheel, just to match their colors. However, it is extremely difficult to tell someone this once they have it their mind, based on what their graphic artist who knows nothing about WordPress, tells them.

There have been occasions where I've seen a few that would require a build from the ground up. But not most. Is there some kind of book out or something that is telling people they have to do this?

Am I the only one that feels this way, or should I just shut up and take 3x's the money from them to do something that I could have done cheaper and faster?

nealrm
02-06-2013, 02:34 PM
I don't know if it is possible in Wordpress, but it is possible from an HTML standpoint. Open the PDF in fireworks and then use the slice feature to carver it up into pieces. You can assign each piece the functionality that it needs. It works best if you have only simple mouse over and click events.

From their standpoint, they are probably trying to standardize a look. They want their ads and website to match.

Harold Mansfield
02-06-2013, 02:36 PM
I don't know if it is possible in Wordpress, but it is possible from an HTML standpoint. Open the PDF in fireworks and then use the slice feature to carver it up into pieces. You can assign each piece the functionality that it needs. It works best if you have only simple mouse over and click events.

From their standpoint, they are probably trying to standardize a look. They want their ads and website to match.

But isn't it more work peeling back layers of photoshop files, than if they had just contacted you with their color scheme and logo and let you tell them the only things you needed them to submit?

nealrm
02-06-2013, 03:15 PM
I would flatten the image before I started slicing. Then it is simply a manner of outlining the areas you want click effects. I have done this several times for real estate plot maps. As the mouse is moved across the screen, the lots are highlighted and a click brings up a picture.

However, if it gets much above mouse effect (drop down menus, rotating images....) it is easier to start from scratch.

Harold Mansfield
02-06-2013, 03:17 PM
I guess in HTML I can see that. But in WordPress, a mock up is nice, but most times it doesn't require any complicated special build. They've mostly just put in some pretty colors that many times they've plopped on top of an existing design anyway. But instead of telling you the design already exists, they want you to rebuild it from scratch because they think that's how you change the colors.

I should probably do what everyone else does, just nod and smile and charge them more than the job has to cost, but I find it hard to do that.

Wozcreative
02-06-2013, 03:42 PM
In a way you are right.. but if you are doing a design that requires specific colors for, buttons, forms, spacing, headers titles, background, how to handle images, how to handle commenting, what the newsletter request will look like, horizontal rulers, paragraph styles, design elements, photo sizes, quotes etc. Just sending "colors" is not enough.

When I design, I start off by creating a PSD of the artwork for the client for approval (home page + 1 internal page).. once the creative is approved I'll then just create the styles in CSS. Creating a PSD is MUCH quicker than doing it in css.. so I prefer to get a go ahead for the design before even touching code. Yes, quick and dirty is better, faster, cheaper.. but I'm not in the business of quick and dirty. It's not profitable for me, nor do I enjoy slaping things together and moving on. I'm not in the business of running a website template factory.

Harold Mansfield
02-06-2013, 03:47 PM
In a way you are right.. but if you are doing a design that requires specific colors for, buttons, forms, spacing, headers titles, background, how to handle images, how to handle commenting, what the newsletter request will look like, horizontal rulers, paragraph styles, design elements, photo sizes, quotes etc. Just sending "colors" is not enough.

Yeah, that would be great. But most times it's something that someone just drew. There is no understanding of any of that. Rules? Nope.


but I'm not in the business of quick and dirty. It's not profitable for me, nor do I enjoy slaping things together and moving on. I'm not in the business of running a website template factory.

I'm not suggesting that anyone be in that business. But there have been many times that I'll look at a PSD, see that it's just a theme that I recognize recolored, a few icons replaced, with their logo on it...and they think that having me rebuild it from the ground up is the only way to go.
I guess the determining factor on that one is budget.

I'm going to give people what they want, but I can't stand "designers" that charge people 10'x the price for something that they didn't create, but led the client to believe that they did at great hardship.

You'd be amazed how many people come to me and think that their last web person ( who they now can't find) custom coded a plug in, and are shocked when I tell them that it's something that is readily available to everyone and that their guy didn't build that.

The worst I've seen so far is, what was supposed to be a custom build that cost $50k (yes, you read that correctly) and when I logged in it was just a Woo Theme with a few CSS changes and 40+ plug ins running. Tragic.

Wozcreative
02-06-2013, 03:59 PM
I see what you are saying.. actually this is why I don't do strictly development. I actually refuse to work on other people's design for the above reasons. Most of then then not, it has not been optimized for wordpress at all. Even working with an existing PDF of a printed brochure is a nightmare if I was not the one to design it.

I guess I don't have the problem, I just decline all projects where I am not involved from the start. I sleep better at night ;)

And yea, I had a client come to me in frantic that a designer had copied an competitors website exactly (perhaps just ended up using the same template the competitor did), and now they were getting sued by their client for this..

Harold Mansfield
02-06-2013, 04:05 PM
Working on WordPress sites that someone else did is very difficult at times. Some people have complete train wrecks back there. It's sad actually, when a client thinks they paid for something and you have to tell them that it is nowhere to be found. No code. No plug in. No settings. It's not working because it doesn't exist.

I get so many like this that I end up trying to make things so easy for people that no matter what happens to me, they'll still be able to manage their site.

billbenson
02-06-2013, 05:52 PM
It seems to me that prior to the CMS era most web designers did a photoshop mockup of what the site would look like. Then when they got approval they wrote the site in html. Today, if you are good with wordpress it probably doesn't take that much more time to just find a theme, change some colors around etc and show the customer a design for approval??? And if they like it, you've already got phase 1 of the project started.

Harold Mansfield
02-06-2013, 06:02 PM
It seems to me that prior to the CMS era most web designers did a photoshop mockup of what the site would look like. Then when they got approval they wrote the site in html. Today, if you are good with wordpress it probably doesn't take that much more time to just find a theme, change some colors around etc and show the customer a design for approval??? And if they like it, you've already got phase 1 of the project started.

The same can be done with almost any platform. There are thousands of HTML templates out there too. IMO, very few people actually come up with a layout that is completely original. It's been a while since I've seen something that I can't track down and find one that looks exactly like it.

Not saying you can just template every site. There are some projects that need to be built (designed, and programmed) from scratch, but the average business website is pretty much minor variations on the same 5 layouts, because they work. We've gotten it down to a science of eye movements, how long people stay on a page, how much is too much to read, organizing information and content, where navigation works the best ...all the way down to preferable colors, and font styles.

How many times do you see a site with the logo at the bottom? Or on the right? Top left is where everyone puts it now. Because it works there. Or right side navigation? It's rare. Cause left side or top navigation works. When is the last time you saw red letters on a yellow background? Huge fonts. Fonts too small? Moving gifs? Dancing bananas? Flash openings? We don't do any of those things anymore. White backgrounds are the standard, with the exception of creative and entertainment sites...it's pretty much universal.

Look around at any website, whether it be a bank, or a record company. The basic structure is the same. The only difference is what cool ways you can implement the functions, graphics and images.

Sounds boring, and it's still not easy for the lay person, and there's obviously a little more to the whole thing, but we all follow the same basic structure. How many times do you need to keep building the foundation from scratch?

billbenson
02-06-2013, 09:51 PM
I had forgotten about right side navigation. It was popular for a while. Never liked it though. I like things like you describe to be where you expect them to be.

vangogh
02-07-2013, 02:44 PM
I don't even use Photoshop to design anymore. Photoshop really isn't good at showing the different ways a site responds to different browsers or how people can interact with it. For the last year or two I've worked quicker by creating a wireframe of sorts in Keynote and then pushing things to the browser as soon as possible. In the future I'll probably be able to do without the Keynote wireframe too.

Harold I get what you're saying, though it's a common request to develop something from a Photoshop comp. Some companies want to hire different designers and developers and some probably think they have to. Some probably think that by having someone in the office design the site in Photoshop it'll save on all the costs.

It's not my favorite project to take someone else's PSD and develop a site or theme, but I don't mind. In some respects it's easier than doing the design myself. I just have to make what they gave me work. It's a project and a paycheck. I don't think it's the way to get the best site, but I also don't think you're going convince most of the companies that would approach you with the PSD that it isn't.

nealrm
02-07-2013, 06:14 PM
Photoshop to design a website :(

vangogh
02-07-2013, 11:09 PM
Good timing in my feedreader today. I came across this article on Photoshop Etiquette (http://veerle.duoh.com/design/article/photoshop_etiquette) by Veerle Pieters. There's more in the post, but here are a few basic things:


Keep Layers, effects, masks… as flexible possible: use Smart Objects, vector-shapes, etc.
Give each Layer & Layer Group a logical name
Make sure your Layers & Layer Groups easy to navigate
Use Layer Comps where needed


There's also a link to the site Photoshop Etiquette (http://photoshopetiquette.com). Yes, a site devoted to how designers should hand off PSD files.

KristineS
02-08-2013, 11:36 AM
Harold, I get where you're coming from here, and I think the issue you're having isn't so much that someone is bringing you a PSD file and asking you to create a design, it's that people don't understand what it takes to create a Wordpress theme or a web site and so are being duped. I think that's sad, but I also don't think it's going to stop. As with many things, this is a case of buyer beware. The information is out there, so any wise person would do some basic research before contacting a designer. I know there are a lot of honest designers out there, many of them post on this forum, but there are also those who would take a PSD add a few $40 plug ins to a Wordpress theme and charge 25K for it. That happens, and the only defense a buyer has is to be educated.

vangogh
02-09-2013, 01:55 PM
I just reread the whole thread and think I missed some things the first time around.

As far as clients are concerned I don't know why you expect them to know how a site is built. It's not their job to know. I've had clients ask me to do something they thought would take 5 minutes when in reality if might take 10 hours and I've had clients ask me to do something they thought would be difficult that only took a few minutes. Even if you're talking about changing colors on a theme, it's not necessarily a 10 second change. It depends a lot on how the theme was coded. Sure some themes it will be nice and easy to change colors, though on others the colors are part of images and the code is so spread out across all the files that it could still take a few hours to change.

As far as designers are concerned I think you're underestimating how long some things take. Sure, charging someone $50k to customize a theme and add a bunch of plugins is wrong, but it's not like the cost should only be $100 either. You see a theme someone else built and assume the designer did no work. Do you know how many themes that might have looked through before finding the one that met the client's needs? Do you know how many changes the client asked for as they customized it? I've customized some themes where the code was so poorly done that rebuilding the theme from scratch would have taken less time.

Same for plugins. Why do you assume it took no time to find those plugins? It's possible an hour was spent evaluating several plugins for each type that was ultimately used. Some of those plugins possibly needed some customization. Most plugins I've worked with require more than installing and activating to work on a site. hey often need some basic configuration and many will require code to get them to display in the theme just so. And 40+ plugins. Odds are there were some conflicts between them that needed to be sorted out. $50k for that is probably ripping off the client, but it's not unreasonable to think the job could still be a few grand.

There are definitely cases where people get taken, but there are also plenty of times where the amount of work something took is under-appreciated.