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.