Non-Profit Drupal

Maureen Lyons had a nice write-up yesterday on her experience with drupalizing and launching the new Harvard Science site. It's a worthwhile read - but this comment definitely caught my eye.

The designer had been working with the client for nearly six months at this point, and everyone had become wed to the "Whitney" font used heavily throughout the site. So despite a devious experiment on my part proving that the client couldn't tell which page used sIFR and which did not, I was asked to go back and add Whitney into the site.

This is why I get worked up when I hear about design moving forward without a developer present, providing the needed sanity check. When just a client and a designer get together, the third person in the room is often the devil.

Once a VP eyes that crazy comp, produced by a guy who's favorite medium is rock-band posters, your work as a developer (including your new ad hoc role as IT educator) gets 10x more difficult.