Template Design Kit

Template Kit - Template Design Kit - Rapid Template Design

I’ve received several emails requesting information on how the RTDS compares to other products and why this site is called Template Design Kit. I’ll briefly outline the transitions that took place for your better understanding.

Template Design Kit vs Template Design Series

Joomla, Open Realty, WordPress, Drupal, vBulletin, ZenCart, osCommerce among a few others were partial motive behind using the term “Template Design Kit”. The primary motive however was our experience in a process of design called “Rapid Conceptualization” which is a process used by many large template clubs and design firms throughout the world. With applications like those mentioned above having been built to follow a process that separates design and presentation from the code logic, template engines lent a great deal to our decision to add the word “KIT”. Since each of those programs uses a template engine of sorts, template tags and or function calls for rendering content seemed to be a prime candidate for generator type applications which again spells “KIT” to us.

However, after careful analysis of our objectives we sought to break down the Template Design Kit into segments since portions of the product are available in academic settings where things like Open Realty or even Joomla would not be required for the design learning process. As mentioned on my personal blog many transitions and variations were considered as we juggled publishers for the printed typography and other guides included in that series.

With the realization that this kit would need to be broken apart, we toyed with the idea of calling the product the Template Design Kit concatenated with a simple term like Segment Name A, Segment Name B and so on. So for instance if you had the TDK with the print publishing modules it would be called “Template Design Kit Segement - Print Publishing” This method proved confusing to end users we polled. So we decided that since the course ware would be FIRST and FOREMOST for students of design, we would copy the term “series” as used by other educational materials available in the collage bookstore. The addition of the word Rapid came solely from experience in the design business where we use RAPID conceptualization tools for design as in the proprietary product “Rapid Template Generator”. Rapid Template Generator is a desktop MS Windows application used to generate volumes of layout output examples based on user input. If you enter for example; 3 columns, header, footer, logo in header, navigation both right and left, then you add a color scheme, the generator would produce anywhere from 1 - dozens of layouts automatically which you would then complete with your customization. Great product and such proves very successful for companies like Template Monster or Broaderbund that publishes thousands of generated designs. So since our own product has a generator, we like “Rapid” in the word. Thus is born the title of the product.

Rapid Template Design Series

The Rapid Template Design Series is in fact the Template Design Kit broken in to a series of products. An actual series where updates and supplementals are released in a periodical format. Better yet is that one fee is paid for access to all the elements of the series including support materials and updates to the series as they become available.

Structured in an educational format the series and this site feature many things not yet revealed in hopes that our competitors (those that use the term “Template Kit”) wont attempt to steal the features prior to the full release of our product.

Two segments of the RTDS are now available for commercial release. The Open Realty Template Design Series and the Joomla Template Design Series are now complete. A brief summary of features for these items are as follows;

• Dreamweaver 8 and CS3 Extensions
• Adobe Photoshop Actions Suite
• Master Layout Series
• Navigation Generator
• XHTML Form Generator
• Fully Documented in the product directories and the DW Extension for ease of implementation.
• Video Tutorials on the use of the these TDS segments.
• Video Tutorials on the process of design.
• Full Access to the new online Snippet DB.
• Full Access to the entire template inventory.
• Full Access to the online template generators for WordPress, OpenRealty and Joomla.
• Full Access to all updates and supplemental materials related to this series for a full 18 (eighteen) months.
• An assortment of drop in snippets and code elements
• The basic level RTDS collection. (differs from the full system greatly)
• More as its released granting you full access to updates and future releases at no extra cost.

A few key things were changed in this rework of the series beginning with the technique for presentation of the videos. New features like the online snippet database and the rapid learning system (partially available to all visitors) are critical components we took a serious amount of time rethinking and rebuilding from the ground up. After considerable time, investment and analysis into these bold new features, we are confident that the Template Design Kit and the projects offered, will provide an arsenal of tools for students and intermediate de

Well its been a very long and troubling few months but I’m back in action so to speak.  The template design series was almost placed on the back burner had it not been for some generous help from members over at CSS Creator helping me clean up much of the code.

CSS for layouts is very important now days and any site that isn’t XHTML compliant is generally frowned on by designers and developers alike.  The issue with CSS isn’t really an issue its a compliance adherence and like programming, individual style and programming practices vary from one coder to the next.  Most of my code is in this template series is pretty standardized and familiar to nearly any CSS designer in the market.  So general and organized is the code that it’s clear my objective was to avoid controversy and critique while providing good solid XHTML based code for the series.

In the years I’ve been a designer I’ve had the benefit of being a teacher as well and I’ve been able to see first hand much of the code from many designers around the world and its interesting to note that certain fundamentals never seem to die and good common practices are persistent characteristics of good coding regardless of individual style.  This RTDS really coins on good well versed and common coding practices where CSS layouts are concerned.  I frequently and quite actively use the “Clear Fix” technique presented by Tony from www.csscreator.com in a good portion of the master layout foundations and I frequently use very common and very basic styling methods in use today without going into exhaustively involved code.  When I say exhaustive involved code I mean the styling of things not common in most templates and layouts.  Things like tables and or forms for example are void in nearly all the template foundation masters included in the kit and I’ve taken a great deal of time and patience to make sure that things are easy to follow and understand by example.  After all, the RTDS is an instructional series for students of design, not a professional developer / designer resource as I may have eluded to in the past by mistake.

When the kit publishes, the price will reflect the fact that some of the original project objectives had to be removed in order to accommodate a mass appeal and because of such will likely be about $39.95.  Previously we had planned on variants starting at that price and topping out around $149.95 as the project flooded over into its 5th CD along with the printed font guide and other supplemental documents.   With the help of Mark Panavia I’ve managed to reduce the overall size of the course series to about 3 CD’s or a single DVD reducing cost and time.

All of the photoshop actions for template building and the supplementals for design fundamentals was also updated to accommodate photoshop beginning at version 8 up to current CS3 releases.  Most of the actions were tested in version 7 as well but should not be counted on as a the ideal version for use with this kit.

I’ll get back to publishing some basic materials tomorrow morning and then hopefully get this production live and ready to roll.  Now that we are going to self publish it should be a lot less demanding in the support realm since I and my partners know the product well enough to draft good support material in the new forum.

Adobe Dreamweaver Template Building Extensions Released
Jared Ritchey released 3 of the 5 template extensions for Adobe Dreamweaver on his blog today.

Each of the extensions is essentially a tag generator for open source applications that assists in the design and development of XHTML compliant templates and themes for such applications as WordPress, Joomla, OpenRealty, CRELoaded and vBulletin as of yet. Additional template extensions are in scheduled development and should be available shortly thereafter.

To download the extensions as well as documentation you can visit Jared Ritchey by selecting the link under the blogroll.

A new methodology in design created by those who teach design.  The Rapid Template Design Series is a unique courseware solution built specifically to teach entry level students the principles of design in a rapid learning format.

The RTDS is the only system of its kind in existence that is featured both as a commercial product and an educational product recognized by colleges and universities as an effective medium for learning the core elements of design.

Most other types of design instructional courses tend to follow a format that is largely focused on broad general terms.  The Rapid Template Design Series could easily be summarized as a Rapid Design Course, taking students of design and rapidly teaching them with real world techniques, not theories.

Built on fundamentals as old as the printing press, the RTDS will take the entry level student of design and build a solid working foundation in under 24 hours.  Thats 24 actual hours, covering everything fundamental to the print and web design process.

In addition the RTDS includes core documents, font guides, proprietary applications and a unique collection of Dreamweaver Template Generators specific to some of todays top CMS applications such as WordPress, Joomla, Drupal and others.  The RTDS also covers the principles and fundamentals of preparing pre press documents for the printing industry.

Do for release in the Fall Semester of 2007 the RTDS will be available in college bookstores and online here at this very site for an exceptionally affordable price.

Be sure to check back here September 8th 2007 for a special offer for all students of design.