Great Drupal designs, themes, etc.

Am I wrong or do there seem to be a lot of people who are idiots (well, let's be gentler, poorly informed) saying all over the web that design potential is the problem with Drupal? After my first couple of months of starting to learn Drupal and starting to learn CSS/HTML/PHP, it seems to me that you could make Drupal look like just about anything you wanted to. It's a shame that so many people are saying Drupal is great but you can't design with it. This seems to be a cyclic self-fulfilling prophecy for it makes the great designers stay away from Drupal, which makes there continue to be a lack of great looking themes, which further propagates the opinion that Drupal is bad for design.

Clearly, something should be done about this. Drupal is, in my opinion and in the opinion of many others, the most powerful open sourced CMS/CMF available (some even say it's better than all the non-open source). While Drupal SHOULD still continue to further refine its code and the efficiency and power of its program, it is already the best thing going. So, wouldn't it be wise to now bring more focus to generating the kind of rich design community that such an amazing CMS deserves. I think and hope the changes in Drupal 6 to make it even more CSS/designer friendly will be a big step in that direction. But, I wonder if there might be ways to further push this. So, here are some ideas on that front:

1) Have a DESIGN SPOTLIGHT within the drupal site that highlights the best designs and designers and offers design tips and innovations. It could perhaps be run with the blog or story format and all users could contribute articles, a collective blog of sorts. The site itself might be designed in an innovative way thus reinforcing these elements further.

2) Have a DESIGN CONTEST for Drupal 6, make it a little prestigious, and promise a lot of pr for the winner. That way, we'd get a lot of great designs contributed by great designers who want to run for the prize. I am not personally in a position to do this, but for those with more disposable incomes, it could be fun if a group of people decided to chip into a pot for a prize to the winner and have Drupal users vote. If we were offering $1000, or $5000, or $10,000 for the best design, I bet we would be impressed with what we saw. The message to the world (or the web/blog/design/development community) would be DRUPAL IS GREAT FOR DESIGN AND OFFERS GREAT DESIGNS. It would be a big headline and would go all over the web.

3) Have a focus on porting some of the best WP themes into Drupal. I, for instance, would love to see Leia in Drupal. And, indeed, I may work on it, but as someone new to code, it might take me a very long time to get it (!!anyone want to join that project!!). Although I think it is a shame that so many bash Drupal's design capabilities without knowing anything about it, it is true that Wordpress and other programs offer hundreds of beautiful templates right out of the box, and Drupal offers almost none. For a blogger or someone else who wants to get started quickly and knows little or nothing about design, it is discouraging, a huge disincentive (piled on top of the learning curve for Drupal).

Disclaimer: I want to BE CLEAR that I think there are many very good, well designed Drupal themes already out there, and I am very grateful to the designers who have made them. When I say there are not any great themes, I mean particularly aesthetically arresting, stunning, beautiful themes. There are, of course, many tight, good-looking, attractive themes that function marvelously. I am talking about the flash, the elegance, the visual grace and glitter of the aesthetic supreme. Drupal has never been about that. And, it does not need to MAINLY be about that. But, there's no reason not to have a dimension where the richly and extravagantly aesthetic, or even the masterly simple and profound aesthetic, can grow and enrich the whole community.

And, if anyone agrees with all this and is moved to say I should be in charge of everything I just outlined, I must unfortunately say that I am involved in too many projects already right now to do so, though I would try and support any projects that emerged out of this in some capacity.