G2 needs UI Designers!

We've come a long way with Gallery 2.0. While it doesn't quite yet have all of the cool features from G1, it's in a new framework that is far more reliable, scalable and customizable than G1 ever was. It currently runs on MySQL and PostgreSQL equally, makes liberal use of templates, is internationalized and already partially localized into 5 different languages.

What G2 is missing is a nice looking UI. We need a good UI designer to help us to clean up the navigation and make it all look good. Do you have the necessary skills to help us put polish on G2 and make it presentable to the world? If so, we've got room for you on the team. Remember that working on a project like this looks great on your resume :-) Read more for the job requirements.

Update: We got a ton of applicants and have chosen a new UI designer. There's still work for everybody, though so stay tuned in the UI forums if you want to get involved!G2 at the moment is like the engine from a Ferrari in the body of an AMC Pacer. It's got all the cool features and has room for a million more, but it doesn't look all that great. What we need is somebody who has experience in making attractive and intuitive web applications.

We have the following needs:

We need somebody to go through the existing UI and help us to streamline the navigation and interactions. We need a cleaner way for the user to know where they are at all times and to understand what options are available.

We need designers to create new themes and layouts. Themes are pluggable modules that allow you to change the look and feel of G2. Layouts control the way that the photos and text are organized on the screen (ie, show the photos in a grid with the captions below them or show the photos on the right side with the captions on the left, etc).

We need graphic artists to come up with cool buttons and icons and animations and other snazzy stuff.

You don't need to be able to write PHP code to do this job, although it would greatly help if you have enough experience to set up your own G2 and make changes in your own development environment. If you don't have that kind of know-how, it would still be useful to us if you can create mockups of a nice looking UI with clean interactions since we can always get an engineer to work with you to make the UI come to life.

If you're interested in this position, please send us the following:

• A brief description of your technical experience (no need to send your whole resume; just summarize the good bits)
  
• A portfolio of UI designs that you've contributed to
  
• Some kind of indication as to your level of commitment to a project like this.
  

Email us the above info and we'll get back to you ASAP. Note that Bharat just had a baby so expect replies to take a day or so.