Why Graphic Designers love Divi theme
I’ve been using WordPress since 2011. I tried out several themes but found them to be less user friendly and customizable as they claimed. Each new theme took awhile to figure out how to make it work. If the developer didn’t keep up with the theme, the site was at risk when WordPress updated to a new version. I just wanted to be able to put things together like I did in Adobe InDesign or Illustrator.
I was trained to think and work like a graphic designer, not a coder.
I started losing interest in web development, and decided to just stick with what I’m good at which is print design. Then I discovered Divi theme by Elegant Themes, and everything changed. Switching to the Divi theme was a game changer.
The word “div” by definition defines a division or a section in an HTML document. The <div> tag is used to group block-elements to format them with CSS. As an “old school trained” graphic artist I was use to inserting text into a text box in Adobe InDesign, Illustrator or Photoshop. Images were placed into an image box and adjusted either numerically or simply manually by anchor points. I could visually “see” what I was doing. Divi has an image builder plugin that allows you to work in a similar way.
It’s not perfect and as easy as Adobe but the developer, Elegant Themes, has made vast improvements. It just keeps getting better and better. What I love best are the numerous tips, tutorials and freebies available at Elegant Themes blog, https://www.elegantthemes.com/blog/. The learning curve is not as simple as SquareSpace but you’re also not limited to choosing from only a small selection of templates and plugins. In Divi, you have thousands of WordPress Plugins to choose from. Adding Plugins is like gaining muscle to a powerful website. Just follow the tutorials in Elegant Themes, and it will all make sense.
As a designer, I want the freedom of designing my own sites without a template which I’m able to do in Divi.
You can create a website in Divi without having to code. But honestly, you really need to do a little coding to achieve a more customized look. I love the option of being able to save your layout to the Library to easily reuse them for another page or project. Think of it as kind of like the “Save as” feature in Adobe when you don’t want to re-create a page from scratch.