Our company recently hired a front-end development company to theme  
the Drupal site we built-out for our client. Long story short: it  
seems pretty clear to me that they don't really know Drupal (and might  
not even like it!), nor do they understand its nuances, best  
practices, template/theming system, etc. We thought we'd be using  
these guys for all our projects but now it seems more and more that we  
may need to change direction.

Furthermore, we're not sure we can outsource this critical part of the  
process to anyone, really. The steady communication and close  
collaboration it takes to execute a theme appropriately (from PSDs/un- 
themed Drupal site to a fully themed/functional Drupal site) seems to  
merit an in-the-same-city/oft­en-in-the-same-room working relationship.

So basically right now we're reevaluating our options, trying to  
determine the best way forward. We might:

A. look for a new front-end development group that truly and actually  
specializes in Drupal
B. call-up one of our developer friend who's very knowledgeable, pay  
him to familiarize himself with Drupal, and pay him to handle our  
theming needs
C. seek to contract a front-end Drupal specialist via the Meetup

Once again for clarity's sake: we're not looking to hire a designer.  
Our art director is fantastic at that. What we need is someone to take  
care of translating her designs to functional themes for the sites  
that we build-out.

If anyone has any thoughts on a way forward, or is interested in  
option C, please let me know!

Many thanks...

// stephen Piscura