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I finished building a new blog called "Sound Design." This is where you will find music reviews that have until now been posted on this blog. I will still have the album of the week and links to recently reviewed albums in the sidebar, so you shouldn't really notice to much of a change. I wanted the subject of this blog to keep a little closer to matters of design, and I needed an excuse to create a second blog and learn Movable Type a little better. I am tossing around the idea of creating a third blog that would just have photos. Sound Design can be found at sounddesign.beadesigngroup.com.
We hope you like the updated design of our site. Thanks for your patience as we iron out the last few glitches of the change over.
Today we sent out invitations to twenty graphic designers who we think would make good authors for our blog. We look forward to the unique perspective our new authors will bring to our site. Look for posts from the new authors early next week.
If you didn’t know that the stock photo site Veer had a blog, it is worth checking out. They just announced that they are sponsoring a poster contest with SpeakUp. The only creative limitations is that you must base your poster on a quote from SpeakUp’s blog.
While you are at Veer, check out their "Behind the Typeface: Cooper Black."
Don’t know how many of you read Steven Heller (May/June) and Rick Poynor’s (Sept/Oct) articles in PRINT this past year. They are worth a read. Some of the highlights:
HELLER: “I hate design blogs. True, they provide a forum for the free exchange of ideas and the oportunity to win virtual friends and influence people, but they are habit-forming, time-consuming, and sometimes infuriatingly self-serving.”
HELLER: “Some bloggers simply post to see their words in typeólike being smitten with the sound of their own voices.”
POYNOR: “…overfamiliar tone and endless jokey asides can be a distraction for those who want to read, think and participate in debate.”
Last week I finally upgraded Be A Design Group from Movable Type 2.661 to Movable Type 3.15. The main reason I wanted to upgrade was to control comment spam better. The upgrade was pretty painless aside from a few glitches that I will explain in a second. I apologize if anyone experienced any problems with our site during the upgrade. If anyone is comparing blog software, I highly recommend Movable Type. It is a great product, and worth the relatively low cost.
Pardon the break from the graphic design dialogue. As a responsible member of the blogosphere, I thought I would share the following exchange between me, Movable Type Support, and our hosting company. The conversation is regarding a hack of mt-comments.cgi which turned out to be a false alarm. If you aren’t interested in what happens behind the BA curtain, go about your business…
Bennett and I have collected a pretty good list of email addresses, and it was with much hesitation that we decided to send out a mass email about Be A Design Group. I built the email, plugged in the mailing list, and stared at the screen for about fifteen minutes contemplating whether or not this really was such a good idea. After all, this list represents not only huge names in the graphic design field, but most of the people that are responsible for the success of our site. If there is anybody we don’t want to upset, their name is most likely on this list. Once I gained enough courage, I hit the send button. “Here goes nothing.”
Maybe you got our email, and have something to say about it. Let us have it. Your feedback is welcome and will be taken very seriously.
As you probably know, Be A Design Group is powered by Movable Type software. Today Movable Type 3.2 was released, and our site has been upgraded to the new version. So far everything seems to have gone well, and I am enjoying the vastly improved Movable Type interface and features. If anyone notices any bugs, please let us know, and thanks for your patience.
Be A Design Group has had an RSS feed since we started, but it is high time we promoted it. Despite all the hype surrounding RSS feeds, the concept is still a little tricky to understand for the newbie. Let me make this as simple as humanly possible:
By using any of the widely available free newsreaders, (I recommend NetNewsWire, Yahoo, or the new Safari) you can “subscribe” to any site with an rss feed. Simply enter http://www.beadesigngroup.com/rss2.php into your newsreader and you will have a subscription to Be A Design Group. That is pretty easy, right?
If you want even more RSS options we have some more feeds for you. Here are the addresses:
Comments RSS Feed http://www.beadesigngroup.com/comments.php
Podcast RSS Feed http://www.beadesigngroup.com/podcast.php
One of the most tempting strategies for a website is to make something so cool that the whole internet will link to you. Who hasn’t dreamed of getting a link on BoingBoing and becoming the hottest thing on the internet? Well, last week with the help of BoingBoing, MetaFilter, Engadget and Digg, my Lego camera infected the internet like some kind of virus. I would be lying to you if I said that the attention that my Lego camera received wasn’t awesome. When it comes to generating a buzz, the sites I listed are pretty much the best place to have a link. So as I reflect on my dream tour of the internet, I am forced to ponder this dreadful question: Does viral publicity equal success, or does it make me I a one-hit-wonder? I guess time will tell, but let me share the details of the past week with you and attempt to convince you that a website full of good content is better than viral success any day of the week.
A quick post to point you towards Armin’s latest post on Speak Up regarding the last issue of Emigre. While Armin doesn’t believe that blogs are responsible for killing Emigre, he gladly takes the credit. I would too if people were attributing Emigre’s demise to Be A Design Group. I think it is understandably arrogant for Armin to consider Speak Up and Design Observer as the only blogs with enough power to challenge an institution like Emigre, but I don’t blame him. Let me offer a couple counterpoints to Armin’s well written piece:
Did blogs kill Emigre? It sounds nice, and is kind of a trendy way to say goodbye to the publication. Blogs are getting blamed for everything lately, and we bloggers gladly take credit. Newspapers all over the world are near death and blaming the internet. Print-on-demand allows anyone to publish a book or magazine without any of the painful bureaucracy of the old publishing institution. Technology is constantly changing the rules, and that is usually a wonderful thing.
What I find disturbing about what is being said by those most upset about Emigre’s end is their negativity towards blogs. There is a good reason why blogs are replacing traditional print publications: they are better. The publications die because they would rather die than embrace the new system. It is their failure to embrace blogging that has caused their death, not the blogs themselves. As much as I would like blogs to be responsible for killing Emigre, the truth is Emigre just didn’t want to play by the new rules, so they stopped playing. It is sad really, because Emigre could have made a really nice blog.
Be A Design Group was recently nominated in the “Best Design Discussion Blog” category in the Battle of the Ad Blogs. Looking at the competition, It is a little hard not to feel like an underdog. Help us out by casting your vote for Be A Design Group! Voting ends February 10, so don’t delay.
You probably have noticed the “four things” survey traveling through the blogs. Well, fellow BADG co-founder, Adrian Hanft, tagged me for this. Since I don’t really have a personal blog to share my list, I struggled to come up with a way to answer the questions. I decided to tweak the questions to focus more on the average designer’s perspective. I’m sure many of you will disagree with the answers on the list, but I had to start somewhere. Add you own thoughts, make corrections, or give me your entire list.
This is the part where I pass the torch onto the next four people. I’m setting my sites high. Lets see if our fellow Battle of the Ad Blogs nominees will answer the call. Design Observer, Speak Up, Cameron Moll and Core 77 … I would like to see your unique perspective on this list of questions. I dare them to put this random and viral material on their coveted and highly thought-out blogs. If Kottke can do it, why can’t they?
There is a new section in our sidebar that lists the top ten commenters on Be A Design Group. It isn’t much, but I think it is important to recognize the contributions of these people as valuable members of our group. Most of our top commenters have their own websites, so click on their names and show them some love. Thank you to everyone who has left a comment here. If you are wondering how close you are to the top ten, here are the top 100…
The students at the W+K 12 school just released their own blog. It is brand new, so there isn’t much content yet. Our good friend Curtis Pachunka (a former BADCast interviewee) is one of the selected 12 err I mean 13.
Here is to hoping that W+K 12 gives us a peak into their world and that they will upgrade to something a little more custom than a Blogger blog.
A few weeks ago, Donovan and I had an off-air conversation about careers at Pentagram. Sure, you get work with some of the most amazing people in the industry, in really cool offices, for really cool clients, but how far can you go? You know you’ll never make Partner, because Pentagram partners all come from outside of the company. So in the end, we decided you just kind of languish in the Land of Super-great.
We must not have been too far off, because I opened up SpeakUp today to see that founder Armin Vit gave Pentagram his walkin’ papers as has left to handle Under Consideration full time. He notes it’s a little scary, and I’m sure it is, what with the ad revenues from SpeakUp, BrandNew (best site evar!), Quips, and Design Encyclopedia, plus a few book deals and being on good terms with 95% of the entire design industry, it probably looks like an uphill battle.
Well, from all of us here at BA, who have not quit our jobs to do this full time (yet), we say “good luck” and if anyone in NY has any freelance or overflow work, dude could probably use a hand-out.
After 4+ years Be A Design Group would like to say thank you and good bye. We couldn’t have done it with out everyone’s input and support. We are putting BADG into cryogenic freeze, but unlike Walt Disney, there is the technology to reanimate us.
If you missed the retirement announcement, read here. We will make one more post on this site that we will update with news of our plans, announcements and updates. Look for something big from Adrian in the next month. He won’t even tell me what it is about.
