Chapter Three did phenomenal work for us. We were under a tight deadline to design and develop a new site for the foundation, with particular emphasis on a content management system that enabled us to define and categorize the variety of work we do with the National Institutes of Health and its 27 institutes and centers. Chapter Three worked seamlessly with our designer Flax Media to build a site that matched our content management needs. They were responsive and available for additional requests we had. I highly recommend working with Chapter Three! We couldn't be happier with the results.
Kathleen Barrett, Manager, Communications & Web Strategy, the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health



Heya Nica and Floor, great session! I think I have to revise my approach now that you've exposed me to this arguably superior toolset and methodology!
Nica, now I really know why I wasn't having any luck last year convincing you that Photoshop and/or Illustrator was better for creating web design comps. I should have listened to you and started using Fireworks back then. It seems to me now that Adobe Fireworks is to web design what Adobe InDesign is to book layout. Using PS and AI for web design obviously works, but honestly I've always felt that I'm pushing uphill to use these tools efficiently. I think that's going to change with my switch to Fireworks.
Furthermore, the whole template-based approach for designing drupal sites is really smart because as you said it not only speeds things up but it urges you to be thorough and design elements that would normally be missed (pagination, tables, messages, etc). So you're systematically using foresight for every site you design. This also takes away the guesswork and spontaneous CSS design work from your themers (who do not necessarily have good design taste!). Very cool.
With regards,
Jonathan
And for convenience:
Blog Post
http://chapterthree.com/blog/nica_lorber/design_drupal_template_approach
Fireworks PNG template
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/503168/c3_drupal_template.png.zip