Open Source Design

Brendan Sera-ShriarGeoff Palin

BackSpaceStudios.com

The Movement Is Growing!

Open Source Design is more than just designers using free software. It’s about using open source tools to create an interactive, engaging, accessible, and intuitive experience for the user. We believe code is poetry! More and more designers are moving towards, design oriented code, like CSS, PHP, and Java, in order to achieve a more functional design.

The Open Source Design movement is growing everyday. As we move from paper, TV, and radio to the web and mobile technology designers are realizing very quickly that there is more to their pretty pictures!

However, not all DESIGNERS can code, and not all DEVELOPERS can design!

Open Source Design ArsenalCurrent Tools:

• Gimp – Raster Based Image Creation and Manipulation

• Inkscape - Vector Based Image Creation and Manipulation

• Blender 3D – 3D rendering and animatics

• WordPress – CMS site and blog creation

• Drupal – Large scale CMS and community development

• CSS – Design layouts and Typography

• PHP – Web forms and database interactivity

• Java – Goes well with bacon and eggs!

Open Source Design ArsenalWhat’s New:

In 2005 a group of well known Flash developers and designers got together to form OSFlash. OSFlash has become the largest ActionScript open source community online and offline. They are responsible for some of the most powerful and influential open source AS tools, apps, libraries, and more.

In 2007 Adobe Open Sourced the AS3 context and FlexSDK!

OSFlash Projects – just to name a few• Ajax Animator• Open Dialect• FlashDevelop• haXe• AMFPHP• Swfmill and SWFobject• Red5 and Spark• papervision3D• Tweener• Eclipse IDE

Open Source Design in the Commercial workspace

The first large professional project in which Blender was used was in Spider-Man 2, where it was primarily used to create animatics and pre-visualizations for the storyboard department.

"As an animatic artist working in the storyboard department of Spider-Man 2, I used Blender's 3D modeling and character animation tools to enhance the storyboards, re-creating sets and props, and putting into motion action and camera moves in 3D space to help make Sam's vision as clear to other departments as possible." - Anthony Zierhut, Animatic Artist, Los Angeles

Blender has been collaborating with animators from PIXAR and ILM to produce animated shorts in a effort to promote their software. This has also led to the Blender Foundation which promotes free education on Blender 3D and incentives for animated contests and festivals.

Open Source Design in the Commercial workspace

Gimp has been used to design countless websites and interfaces, and has been used in the following Hollywood movies, Harry Potter, The Last Samurai, The Lord of The Rings, and 2 Fast 2 Furious.

Others using Gimp are Sam Richards at Sony Pictures; Nathan Wilson at DreamWorks; Drew Hess at ILM; Andy Prock with Apple; and too many others to name.

Open Source Design in the Commercial workspace

WordPress is a state-of-the-art publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability. WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time.

More simply, WordPress is what you use when you want to work with your blogging software, not fight it.

This is the fastest growing area for Open Source Designers, they are finding a niche as WP themers, designers, developers, and more.

Open Source Design in the Commercial workspace

An Open Source Flash Media Server Built on Java (Mina & Spring). Red5 uses RTMP (Real Time Messaging Protocol), Streaming Audio/Video (FLV and MP3), Recording Client Streams (FLV only), Shared Objects, Live Stream Publishing,

Remoting (AMF),Multi-User Environments.

Open Source Design in the Commercial workspace

Papervision3D is an open source 3D engine for the Flash platform. PV3 allows

Flash developers an designers to take advantage of real 3D environments, lights,

cameras, importing characters and objects from 3DSMax, Maya, and SoftImage.

PHUG – Open Source Culture, was founded over a year ago. It is our goal to develop an Open Source Culture where developers and designers meet to share their knowledge, experience, tools, and expertise in order to bridge the gap between both their communities.

We have successfully built a community of over 4000 members online, we host FREE workshops across Toronto, and will be hosting WordCamp Toronto 2009!

What this means to Open Source Culture, for designers and developers!

• We are nurturing a new community of designers and developers• Bringing Open Source to the commercial workspace• Educating students and professionals on alternatives• Changing the face of design as we know it• Building a better web• Fostering Social Media and Networking

Q: How do we accomplish this? A: FREE Workshops led by experts in these areas of open source

FREE PHUG WorkshopsCurrent Scheduled Workshops:

DrupalJames walkerTuesday Oct 28 2008 @ 630pm

Papervision3D - Using Papervision3D and Parallax to build environmentsRyan Andal - Owner/Technical Director, Zero PatternTuesday Nov 5 2008 @ 630pm

Firefox UI DesignMike Connor – Mozilla FirefoxTuesday Nov 18 2008 @ 630pm

Flash Media Server and BeatMakerDan Zen – Inventor and Professor at Sheridan CollegeTuesday Jan 13 2009 @ 630pm

http://workshops.phug.ca

Bridging Two Worlds!

FlashPress is an extension to WordPress, which allows Flash designers/developers to use the WordPress engine to communicate with a Flash site. The use of the WordPress CMS in Flash overcomes many obstacles involved with maintaining and updating a Flash site.

The FlashPress development thread is restricted to contributors of this group. If you would like to contribute to this project please contact us at info@phug.ca

Launching soon http://www.flashpress.ca and http://www.flashpressdevelopers.com

Another Great PHUG Project!

Major contributors: Alex Nasser and Logan Aube of BNOTIONS.

Other PHUG Projects

WordCamp Toronto 2009

WordPress Plug-in Competition

Time to break out that old code!

One of the important rules that we have is that the plug-ins should be new, i.e. no updates to already existing plug-ins. One great place to get inspired is WordPress Ideas ( http://wordpress.org/extend/ideas ). WordPress Ideas is a place where the people from the WordPress Community, both users and developers vote for

what they would like included in WordPress. Some have been implemented, while some may actually appear in future versions and still others that may not be. So,

why not make a plug-in to accommodate for the latter two?

http://weblogtoolscollection.com/pluginblog

WordPress2.5 with Brendan Sera-Shriar

A Full day of WordPress2.5, focused on design and development.We'll cover the essentials of setup, installation, and management.We'll learn how to build custom themes using CSS, PHP, and imagearchitecture. We'll also jump into custom code and template files, bestpractices for design and management, integrating Flash, and how to buildand install WP and custom plug-ins. Time: 10:00am - 6:00pm (~8 classroom hours)

Price: $99

Location: Toronto

http://richmediainstitute.com/wordpress2.5_2

Resources

• http://www.phug.ca• http://workshops.phug.ca • http://www.cinepaint.org/• http://www.blender.org/ • http://www.inkscape.org • http://www.wordpress.org• http://www.drupal.org • http://www.vecteezy.com• http://www.pv3world.com• http://www.red5world.com• http://www.animatedpng.com • http://osflash.org/ • http://www.bigbuckbunny.org/

Thank YouOpen Source Design

Brendan Sera-Shriar, Director

Geoff Palin, Technical Director

BackSpaceStudios

http://www.backspacestudios.com

Founder of PHUG – Open Source Culture

http://www.phug.ca