Even just a quick gaze through the most god-awful discussion thread I’ve ever seen is enough to make me lose faith in humanity (or at least the kind of humanity that trolls slashdot). If this is the ’social’ part of social media I don’t know that I want to be part of it, these people scare me.
Communitybuddy Jake McKee has 10 questions for Picnik.
They have a bold answer for where they see themselves down the road:
“A big part of the long term vision is that we want Picnik to be THE single “one stop shop†tool for anyone wanting to do anything cool to their photos whether online or OFFline.”
It will be interesting to follow them down this path, the more Jake likes them the more time I’ve taken to check it out. Then again I’m smart enough to know the service isn’t necessarily for people like me (Pshop heavy-users), but the rest of the world. They also look to benefit tremendously from recent announcement that Adobe is moving to a new image manipulation/graphics core that will be available in Flash and AIR, presumably so that they can move towards an ‘online’ version of Photoshop. The irony is that same framework could potentially help folks, like Picnik, move to an ‘offline’ model.
But if you must steal one of her lyrics to have a site THIS AWESOME, then go right ahead. This Ain’t No Disco is a fabulous collection of design agency interiors. This is a nice compliment to my design office pics, and an ingenious way for agencies to recruit. Designers want to work in cool places, and these are some very cool spaces.
I’ve been pruning my feeds over the past week or so and have found myself struggling to delete big name feeds that I am reading less often, or whose content has let me down of late. I’m sure we all struggle with that, at least those of us in the many-hundreds of feed category. So as an aid to those of you who suffer along with me, here’s a few more feeds to add or to replace a feed that has let you down. Let’s get started…
DesignNotes - I came across DesignNotes author Michael Surtees just a few weeks ago when his photos from the Frere-Jone Typewalk surfaced. I’ve been stuck reading since, worth adding to your dailies.
Swiss Miss - If you aren’t already reading this blog shame on you, if you are then bare with me. Tina posts frequently and en masse, and does so on topics spanning the worlds of culture, design and kids. Click…add…now…
Marc Escobosa - Marc is a sharp guy, with a keen eye and clear voice. A majority of the time the site serves as a link list, which is a refreshing departure from copy-laden sites like SpeakUp.
Design Sponge - This one had snuck by me for the longest time. But I’m glad I found it, great site with a fun and clean style.
acejet 70 - Tremendous found artwork/design blog.
Oh and a brazen plea from your author…
crawlspace•media - You’re reading it, don’t forget to grab the feed.
Friend and social media mentor Josh Hallett has taken a position with Voce Communications. Josh has been a huge help to me over the past 4-5 years as well as a thoughtful friend. I’m thrilled to see him elevate his exposure. Join me in congratulating Josh over at the Voce announcement.
We all have skills and expertise. Seth Godin is a master at what he knows, what he does. I’m not sure he fits into a tidy box, but his skills lie in the marketing world, not every world. I value his opinions on marketing, building community around markets, know people and products - I do not value his opinions on design and design strategy. It’s fair enough I guess, I can value what he says in one space but not another. Take for instance my listening to Al Gore when it comes to lockboxes, but not the environment.
There’s so much about Mr. Godin’s post that’s behind the curve, misleading and lacking in technical and design insight that I struggled to believe he actually wrote it. He muddies the water of development, visual and interaction design to the point that I was coming up for air midway through. I highly recommend Mr. Godin stick to what he knows and leave design and design strategy to the professionals, let he lose credibility and mislead organizations into making terrible design choices.
‘Notes on Design’ recently published a bucket-load of posts pimping design competitions, and the community isn’t pleased. Competitions for business customers are a scam, and garbage for designers, as I mentioned earlier this week. Well today they are running an article about the lack of respect for designers in the business community. Um…Notes on Design doesn’t get it. You can’t complain about a lack of respect on your porch while you pimp yourself out the backdoor. Not only do they fail to understand design, they apparently don’t get blogging and community either.
**UPDATE** I want to make it clear the issue is with ‘Notes on Design’ as an entity and it’s editors. They have lost control or failed to manage their editorial to the point that I reflects poorly on their professional authors and contributors.
So I’m finding out more and more people have some connection to music and oddly enough, drum corps, in the tech circles I’m a part of. I never marched, I opted to attend Interlochen rather than march my senior year of high school. However, I have friends who marched Colts, Scouts, Spirit, Magic, Cadets, Phantom, and lots of smaller corps as well. How about you? Any of my loyal readers do the drum corps thing? If so what, when and where?
There’s a connection to all of this (music & tech), but I’ll let you infer what it is, I’m cloudy from a late night with the princess.
(Currently listening to Star 1991 - what a show.)
During my recent session at BlogOrlando the topic of logo design came up. The question, if I remember correctly, came up over the $100 - 3 comp - here’s your logo shops. While the crowd discussed the merits of these services someone mentioned having competitions to design/choose a logo. This is where I had to step in. The attendee mentioned how they had conducted a competition to get someone to design their corporate logo. I’m not alone in my dislike for such practices, there’s an entire community out there to prevent designers (mostly young designers) from falling prey to companies like this.
I asked the crowd a simple question, ‘would you have a design competition to repair your roof?’ No, you’d pay a roofer to do what he’s trained to do and fix the damn roof. Competitions undermine the design community and practitioners working and struggling to maintain value in the market. Design is a discipline, it’s the product of study, practice, talent and diligence and it’s the designer’s duty to help clients understand the value of their work or to walk away. Being asked to submit designs without payment (on spec or via a competition) is disrespectful and do, in large part, to lazy clients unwilling to invest time to find competent designers or to formulate a strategy to get the design they want and need. they don’t do their homework ann, as a result, ask designers to do the extra work for them with no guarantee of payment.
Not all of the blame lies at the client’s feet, many people have saturated the ‘design’ market simple because they have access to and a modicum of training on the tools needed to produce designs. Jeff Croft posted about this phenomenon earlier this week. The tools are simply that, tools. To extend the analogy above - just because I have ladders and shingles doesn’t mean I’m a roofer. Many clients have been burnt by this caliber of design and have diminished understanding of the value of design as a result. In the end we all lose. Like Paulie said in Goodfellas - Just don’t do it. Don’t do it.
Thanks to everyone who made it to my session at BlogOrlando. In case you missed the links are located at: http://ma.gnolia.com/people/jharr/tags/blogorlando - this list will continue to grow so keep an eye on it.
Also, as a little bonus, I have a set of icons for everyone who made it out to the event, or if you’re reading this post. They are free and provided with no restrictions. If you design something cool with them just leave a comment so I can check it out. these will eventaully make it to the downloads section, but for now, grab them here.
These are small, micro-icons that work well as blog category indicators or to simply pep-up your blog sidebar. I have included 4 colors (grey, green, navy and orange) totalling 120 icons. Enjoy.
