The Design Team provides user experience, user interface, and visual design expertise for the WordPress project.
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Welcome! This all-volunteer team needs designers of various kinds. See our handbook and drop into #design once signed up for volunteer opportunities.
Our vision is to be the go-to resource for design for other teams across the WordPress open sourceOpen SourceOpen Source denotes software for which the original source code is made freely available and may be redistributed and modified. Open Source **must be** delivered via a licensing model, see GPL. project.
Hi, all! Here are a few projects the Design Team has contributed to over the past couple of weeks.
Integrating Document Outline into list view
A couple of explorations on how the List View might look if we integrated the Document Outline into it. This would simplify the top toolbar. GH Issue.
Continuing on Placeholders
Continuing with making placeholders that work well in patterns, one PR expands the minimalist style to the Video blockBlockBlock is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience., and another refreshes the appearance from that of a dashed border to a simpler style. In progress here and here.
Updating link/unlink buttons
The link/unlink buttons have been updated to be regular icon buttons. Completed here.
Split inserter
The inserter for patterns is being split into a column of categories and a column of previews. In progress PR, and original design.
More Safari text selection fixes
Before/After
Previously thought to have been fixed, the selection issue now has a new patch applied, that should be more resilient. Completed with more to come.
Media Library Inserter
New work started to on a new Media tab in the Inserter, which will help users adding images to the content without having to open the Media Library. It could also offer an option to search Openverse.
Image dropping modal
Idea: a small modal that appears when users drop a file outside of a drop area, offering them three options: save the file to the Media Library, append it to the post, set it as Featured ImageFeatured imageA featured image is the main image used on your blog archive page and is pulled when the post or page is shared on social media. The image can be used to display in widget areas on your site or in a summary list of posts.. Original issue.
Refreshing patterns for the Query LoopLoopThe Loop is PHP code used by WordPress to display posts. Using The Loop, WordPress processes each post to be displayed on the current page, and formats it according to how it matches specified criteria within The Loop tags. Any HTML or PHP code in the Loop will be processed on each post. https://codex.wordpress.org/The_Loop. block
A proposed refresh of the patterns that come bundled with the Query Loop block.
WordPress.orgWordPress.orgThe community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/ Design Library update
Updates to the WordPress.org Design Library with components for the recently redesigned Global navigation and also improved the footer components with some variations.
Selected style variations have been added to the TT3 theme with edits that were suggested during the curation round. So now would be a great time to test, test, test all variations!
If you have updates you’d like to include in the next Design Share, please drop a note in the Design channel on the Making WordPress SlackSlackSlack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/..
Hi, all! Here are a few projects the Design Team has contributed to over the past couple of weeks.
Curating TT3 style variations
We’ve been busy curating and remixing a set of 10 community-submitted style submissions to be bundled with the upcoming Twenty Twenty-Three theme, which were announced on the Make Design blog this week. In total, we received 38 submissions from 19 contributors in 8 different countries!
Improvements to the WordPress.orgWordPress.orgThe community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/ Homepage
An idea for rotating between different versions of the large headline at the top of the homepage with each page load went live on the wordpress.org site.
Text and blockBlockBlock is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience. selection improvements in Safari
Before / After
A selection across HTMLHTMLHTML is an acronym for Hyper Text Markup Language. It is a markup language that is used in the development of web pages and websites. markup, in Safari, is interpreted as a selection across every node and element in the DOM, and paints a selection marker to that effect. But this is not accurate to what you should see in an editor, where only a subset gets copied or interacted with. By carefully employing user-select, we improved the accuracy of what actually gets selected. These improvements are in v14.1, with more to come. Read more in the PR.
Navigation block overlay improvements
The navigation overlay now uses root paddings if they are defined, making it possible for themes to ensure the menu icon sits exactly where the overlay close button will be. A subtle fade/move animation was also added to the overlay that opens. Completed in PR 1, PR 2.
Navigation block display UIUIUI is an acronym for User Interface - the layout of the page the user interacts with. Think ‘how are they doing that’ and less about what they are doing. improvements
As part of the efforts to improve the navigation block, we have proposed an enhancement to make the Overlay Menu interface much easier to use and we are also working on adding more customization options (issue).
HeaderHeaderThe header of your site is typically the first thing people will experience. The masthead or header art located across the top of your page is part of the look and feel of your website. It can influence a visitor’s opinion about your content and you/ your organization’s brand. It may also look different on different screen sizes. hand-off
Since Openverse team will start to implement the new header next week, we have been polishing the component for all breakpoints and other use cases. The hand-off steps required creating several Figma components for the Design Library migrationMigrationMoving the code, database and media files for a website site from one server to another. Most typically done when changing hosting companies..
Quality of Life improvements in the Design Library
We continue improving the WordPress Design Library and this week we moved the deprecated components and views to an independent file. We also added a small visual guide to better explain the role of each page. These small improvements try to make the library more accessible for new and existing users.
If you have updates you’d like to include in the next Design Share, please drop a note in the Design channel on the Making WordPress SlackSlackSlack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/..
Hey everyone! I’ve been completely blown away by the creativity on display in the style variation submissions received for the Twenty Twenty-Three theme.
Since the window to submit new style variations for the TT3 theme closed last week, I’ve been discussing next steps with design lead, @beafialho. Out of the 38 submissions received from 19 contributors spanning 8 different countries (!), we’ve curated a list of 10 style variations to be shipped with the TT3 default theme.
Before jumping into the list of selections, I wanted to share our selection criteria and plans for next steps:
These variations were selected in an effort to feature the most drastically different set of variations possible — so in many ways, we were looking at what would work best as a collection versus selecting our favorite standalone submissions.
Let’s continue to iterate on the selected submissions up until the WordPress 6.1 betaBetaA pre-release of software that is given out to a large group of users to trial under real conditions. Beta versions have gone through alpha testing in-house and are generally fairly close in look, feel and function to the final product; however, design changes often occur as part of the process. period begins on September 20th.
@beafialho and I have made some tweaks to the curated set of variations and have left comments on the individual GitHubGitHubGitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/ issues for each variation with the requested changes. In many cases, the changes were inspired by a similar submission (we’ll tag any folks whose submissions inspired feedback for others).
No explicit next steps are needed from style variation authors — you can update theme.jsonJSONJSON, or JavaScript Object Notation, is a minimal, readable format for structuring data. It is used primarily to transmit data between a server and web application, as an alternative to XML. files where relevant OR those changes can be made in development by @mikachan and others.
Some of the changes suggested may be a bit aspirational, but let’s continue pushing to see how opinionated we can make each of these variations.
There are also some great discussions happening already about how to showcase the remaining submissions. Some ideas were already discussed in issue #73 — let’s continue thinking about where to collect all the amazing work submitted.
This variation is an interesting experiment in using a single type size. We tweaked it to use a smaller universal type size, a narrow column width, and took some inspiration from the border radius effect used on images in @melchoyce‘s Mono submission.
This variation uses a bold color for all the typography across the site and we think the gray background would work well in a lot of different contexts.
This vibrant submission seems like a really nice, opinionated option for a dark version of the base theme. We’ve made some suggestions on how to bring more color to this variation beyond the proposed overlay effect. We’ve also tried a dot pattern texture in the background that would be a cool, unique addition here!
This variation is a great more traditional option. It would be great to take some inspiration from the Soft variation submitted by @melchoyce and use the Source Serif typeface throughout.
BlockBlockBlock is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience. out
This variation uses opinionated typography and a duotone effect that “blocks out” your images and featured images by using similar colors for the shadow and highlight. We’ve updated these colors with more contrast so that the images are slightly more visible.
This style variation has some really custom elements, like the border around the edge of the page, cool button styles, and unique link underlines. The background color felt similar to a few other submissions and the orange accent color doesn’t have a lot of contrast, so we’ve suggested a new color palette for this variation that would help us round out the collection a bit better.
We loved how fun and colorful this submission was. It had a lot of overlap with another gorgeous submission, @scruffian‘s Retroactive variation — it would be great to incorporate some of the super unique aspects from that submission into Sherbet to make it even more opinionated.
Shout out to @anariel-design, who was our most prolific submitter and created so many lovely variations that it was hard to pick just one! We loved the unique split color background effect used in Aubergine and suggested some ideas to customize it even further.
Huge thanks to everyone who has contributed to this experimental process so far by creating style variations, helping iterate on the base theme templates, or landing new GutenbergGutenbergThe Gutenberg project is the new Editor Interface for WordPress. The editor improves the process and experience of creating new content, making writing rich content much simpler. It uses ‘blocks’ to add richness rather than shortcodes, custom HTML etc. https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/ pull requests from our project wishlist. We’re excited to keep iterating together over the next couple of weeks!
Hi, all! Here are a few projects the Design Team has contributed to over the past couple of weeks.
New Homepage and Download pages for WordPress.orgWordPress.orgThe community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/
New designs for two of the most high-traffic pages on the WordPress.org site — the Homepage and Download page. The new look & feel builds on the updates that rolled out to the News section last year, putting a more modern and jazzy spin on the WordPress brand.
Making the Site Editor feel more like a design tool
Inspired by the style variation video we’ve been looking at ways to elevate key site editing features (styles specially) in the overall experience, so that the site editor feels more like a holistic design tool rather than a template editor.
Rethinking WordPress.org Navigation
Inspired by some discussion on the Make Meta blog, we’ve been exploring how to clean up and simplify the navigation on the WordPress.org site.
Copy improvements in Openverse
As a quick win in the openverse search experience, we shared a design idea to improve the copy on some pages and make Openverse more clear. Having the search engine inside the WordPress site makes it difficult to convey what is about.
Styles update in Openverse
In the current version of Openverse, text styles are defined per component and differ when placed together. We started exploring a style update to clean and centralize all styles to make the search more consistent.
Placeholders
A literal placeholder style with a dashed line has been used in a few places to indicate the ability to add a featured imageFeatured imageA featured image is the main image used on your blog archive page and is pulled when the post or page is shared on social media. The image can be used to display in widget areas on your site or in a summary list of posts. or a a site logo. This style has been expanded to the Image blockBlockBlock is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience., which now visualizes an inherited duotone filterFilterFilters are one of the two types of Hooks https://codex.wordpress.org/Plugin_API/Hooks. They provide a way for functions to modify data of other functions. They are the counterpart to Actions. Unlike Actions, filters are meant to work in an isolated manner, and should never have side effects such as affecting global variables and output.. The placeholder also features a blurred background to set it apart in stacked contexts. Tickets/PRs: Image, Site Logo/Featured Image, Image radius and duotone + more
Inspector grid
With ongoing component work and cleanup, here’s a visualization of how inspector components should naturally lay themselves out.
Pre-publish sidebarSidebarA sidebar in WordPress is referred to a widget-ready area used by WordPress themes to display information that is not a part of the main content. It is not always a vertical column on the side. It can be a horizontal rectangle below or above the content area, footer, header, or any where in the theme. summary section
We continued exploring the pre-publish sidebar with a version that improves the readability of the sidebar by integrating the suggestions inside the main summary section.
If you have updates you’d like to include in the next Design Share, please drop a note in the Design channel on the Making WordPress SlackSlackSlack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/..
Hey everyone, just a quick reminder that there’s one week left to submit style variations for the TT3 default theme before submissions close on August 31st.
Hi, all! Here are a few projects the Design Team has contributed to over the past couple of weeks.
Twenty Twenty-Three default theme kickoff
An experimental new process was kicked off for designing the style variation-focused Twenty Twenty-Three theme with a post on the Make Design blog. Join us in the Making WordPress SlackSlackSlack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. channel: coreCoreCore is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress.-themes-projects.
Visual template building
A number of recent / upcoming developments present an opportunity to implement a more visual, and flexible template creation experience. @jameskosterexplored more here.
Pre-publish sidebarSidebarA sidebar in WordPress is referred to a widget-ready area used by WordPress themes to display information that is not a part of the main content. It is not always a vertical column on the side. It can be a horizontal rectangle below or above the content area, footer, header, or any where in the theme. summary section
@javiarcepublished a proposal to improve the pre-publish sidebar with a summary section that includes the document title, excerptExcerptAn excerpt is the description of the blog post or page that will by default show on the blog archive page, in search results (SERPs), and on social media. With an SEO plugin, the excerpt may also be in that plugin’s metabox., featured imageFeatured imageA featured image is the main image used on your blog archive page and is pulled when the post or page is shared on social media. The image can be used to display in widget areas on your site or in a summary list of posts., tags, and categories.
Editor welcome guide with setup
We have a number of useful appearance and accessibilityAccessibilityAccessibility (commonly shortened to a11y) refers to the design of products, devices, services, or environments for people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design ensures both “direct access” (i.e. unassisted) and “indirect access” meaning compatibility with a person’s assistive technology (for example, computer screen readers). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessibility) options in the Editor. To enable folks to customize their editing experience from the get-go, @jameskoster has been exploring a way to surface these options as a part of the on-boarding process. He recently shared a post on the Make Design blog requesting feedback on the proposal.
Openverse headerHeaderThe header of your site is typically the first thing people will experience. The masthead or header art located across the top of your page is part of the look and feel of your website. It can influence a visitor’s opinion about your content and you/ your organization’s brand. It may also look different on different screen sizes.
@fcoveram continued with the Openverse header, this new version proposes shifting the content type and filtering on a popover without leaving the page.
Global Styles previews
When customizing blockBlockBlock is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience. defaults (in Global Styles → Blocks), there isn’t always an in-canvas preview present for the block you’re customizing. By including a preview in the inspector, you can nevertheless get a sense of your changes. @joen explored this in a ticket.
Stepped Slider
The stepped slider is a new UIUIUI is an acronym for User Interface - the layout of the page the user interacts with. Think ‘how are they doing that’ and less about what they are doing. control that lets users take advantage of preset spacing values. The effort unearthed some interesting challenges around how to present indeterminate states, and the control is likely to evolve further in the future. Dive into the conversation on the ticket.
If you have updates you’d like to include in the next Design Share, please drop a note in the Design channel on the Making WordPress Slack.
Hey, everyone! After sharing a proposal for a new approach to this year’s default theme that would emphasize a diverse collection of style variations, there were a lot of positive replies and notes from folks who’d like to be involved in the process. With the help of @mikachan, we now have a repository for a stripped-back and minimal version of Twenty Twenty-Two, which can serve as our base theme. I wanted to use this post to outline some of the process and timeline details around the collaborative format we’ll use to create style variations for the TT3 theme.
@beafialho made a few changes to TT2 in order to strip it down to a bare, unopinionated canvas:
The largest heading sizes have been scaled down
Different color styles have been applied
The serif font for headings has been replaced by system sans serif font
Images have been removed
GutenbergGutenbergThe Gutenberg project is the new Editor Interface for WordPress. The editor improves the process and experience of creating new content, making writing rich content much simpler. It uses ‘blocks’ to add richness rather than shortcodes, custom HTML etc. https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/ fluid typography and spacing presets functionality have been added
Bea also made four style variations to demonstrate how dramatically different the look & feel of each of the variations can be:
One important note is that we are limited in the number of fonts we can include with the theme and should aim to use 3–4 different typefaces across all variations (in addition to systems fonts). Bea has selected a couple of fonts, used in the variations above, that seem like a good starting point to use because of their simplicity and variety:
System sans serif font
IBM Plex Mono
DM Sans
Source Serif Pro
This is just a starting point, rather than the final list of fonts that will be included with the theme. If anyone feels strongly about using a different font, please speak up because this list can certainly evolve based on what folks would like to use! We can also suggest changes to the base theme as needs arise.
We can collaborate throughout this process in a dedicated channel on the Making WorkPress Slack: #core-themes-projects. If you replied on the original post or reached out in DMs, you’ve already been added to the channel. This can be a place for folks to ask questions and share work in progress through screenshots or videos. The more we work together, the more we can ensure all the variations feel as different, opinionated, and unique as possible!
Design a style variation
This can be done a few different ways, including:
Create an alternate theme.jsonJSONJSON, or JavaScript Object Notation, is a minimal, readable format for structuring data. It is used primarily to transmit data between a server and web application, as an alternative to XML. file to the one provided by the theme and change values directly in the code.
Make changes in the Global Styles panel in the Site Editor. You can save these changes as a new style variation using the Create Block Theme plugin.
Design static mockups in Figma or a similar program.
Submit your style variation
When you’re ready to submit, please create a new issue on the TT3 repository and share your designs:
Theme.json files can be submitted as code or as zip files.
Add images that showcase the look & feel of the variation.
Include a style guide with design specifications — this should include details on typography, colors, spacing, etc. Here’s an example.
Project timeline
Aug 10: Project kickoff
Aug 31: Style variation submissions close
Sept 7: Final curated set of style variations announced
Sept 20: Theme and all variations are committed to Gutenberg trunk in time for WordPress 6.1 BetaBetaA pre-release of software that is given out to a large group of users to trial under real conditions. Beta versions have gone through alpha testing in-house and are generally fairly close in look, feel and function to the final product; however, design changes often occur as part of the process. 1
Gutenberg considerations
There are a few open issues and PRs that would benefit this project and may be able to be moved forward in the next few weeks, including:
We appreciate any efforts by Gutenberg contributors to help move these issues forward! Let’s plan to keep in touch in the channel about any significant changes in functionality that happen after the project kickoff.
Props
Huge thanks to everyone who’s contributed and shared ideas for this project so far!
Design Team RepTeam RepA Team Rep is a person who represents the Make WordPress team to the rest of the project, make sure issues are raised and addressed as needed, and coordinates cross-team efforts.
Over time the number of appearance and accessibilityAccessibilityAccessibility (commonly shortened to a11y) refers to the design of products, devices, services, or environments for people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design ensures both “direct access” (i.e. unassisted) and “indirect access” meaning compatibility with a person’s assistive technology (for example, computer screen readers). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessibility) options in the Editor has grown, and is likely to continue to do so with new features continually in the works.
To create an editing experience that feels intuitive, folks will often need to tailor these settings based on their individual preferences and needs. There is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all.
Instead of relying on people to find these settings on their own (admittedly they’re a little scattered, but that’s another issue), it might be good to surface them during onboarding. Consequently, users can set up a comfy editing experience straight-away.
In this post I’m sharing one idea to accomplish this, which essentially augments the current welcome guide in order to expose these options.
Simplify and extend
If you aren’t familiar, the existing welcome guide outlines several features of the blockBlockBlock is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience. editor over 4 different ‘slides’ presented in a modal:
The first part of this design exploration condenses those slides into a single, larger one. Here is a demonstration of how we might do this:
It would be good to explore more opinionated designs / layouts for this slide, and consider how we might optimise the copy. This is just one option to get the conversation started.
The primary call-to-action encourages the user to configure the editor, but there’s a secondary option to skip configuration and simply ‘start writing’.
Configuring the Editor
The configuration process consists of three steps, each of which include options that fit into a particular theme.
The first step offers a way to set up the Document Toolbar display. Hovering or focusing on each radio button will cause its effect to be rendered in the preview on the right-hand side of the modal.
Note: This option isn’t implemented just yet, so may not be necessary immediately.
In the second step we find options relating to the block toolbar. As before, hovering/focusing a radio button will cause the preview area to render the corresponding effect. As there are two options in this step, the user effectively gets to observe how they both interact at the same time which will really help illustrate what the finished configuration will look like.
The text formatting option is another one that hasn’t been fully implemented yet, but it exists in the codebase and is ready to go.
The final step follows the format of the previous two and contains features pertaining to accessibility.
Once all options have been selected, clicking ‘Finish’ will exit the set up process and the user will be dropped into the freshly configured editor.
Putting it all together
Here’s a short video demonstrating the entire flow:
Feedback
First and foremost, it would be good to gather thoughts around whether this is a good idea in the first place. Secondly, how does everyone feel about the options presented in the media above? The three steps were informed by the available options, so if we were to consider others then the steps might need to be tweaked a bit. Perhaps there are alternative ways to categorise the features presented here?
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