102 year old Zhou Youguang, inventor of Pinyin, still works in his study everyday. A video well worth watching. Inspiring.
Shawn Blanc interviews John Gruber, money quote:
“There are a lot of people writing for the web today; but there aren’t that many at all who are trying to do great writing for the web.”
The stagnation of web design
When something big happens in tech — the most recent example being Microsoft’s attempt to buy Yahoo! — bloggers oftentimes link to TechMeme to show a permalink of the ongoing online discussion. As they should, it’s a great resource (as well as a great example of how one guy can make something extremely useful if he executes well).
As I was browsing through the blogs that had linked to my Pixish articles last week, I noticed people linking to searches on Google Blog Search whenever they wanted to mention the online discussion. It worked well enough, but there was obviously no threading or ranking, because that’s not what Blog Search is about.
That got me thinking, why isn’t there a TechMeme for web design?
That, of course, also got me to thinking about how maybe I should start one. Which then, as it always does, immediately started me thinking up good domain names (I’m partial to designermeme.com).
But then I stopped, realizing I was missing something. TechMeme works because there are thousands of people blogging about Google, Apple, et al. at all hours of the day. These companies are constantly pushing for PR of their latest initiatives and bloggers hoping to get traffic out of it are constantly pushing out new blog posts about them. Few of the posts are good, most are just me-toos, but it keeps a dynamic, updated conversation going all the time.
That’s why TechMeme works. DesignerMeme (or whatever) would never work.
The Pixish flare-up was the most excitement web design’s seen in weeks. We’re so bored with the stagnant web design industry we jump at the chance for a little drama, a little something to ruffle our tail feathers and make us fire up WordPress/MT/whatever. I guess the last brouhaha was the IE8 mess and before that you have to go all the way back to last year for more of Jeff Croft’s web standards rants.
Have you looked at what passes for web design news these days? Design Float is an unreadable trash heap of Top 10’s that bubble to the top with just a handful of duplicate votes, deli.cio.us’s popular page is a shell of itself, Digg’s Design category has always been worthless, and then you have all those sites that shan’t be named (CSSBeauty, CSSVault, CSSRemix, etc. ad naseum).
A DesignerMeme would only have something interesting on it once or twice a month. Every other second of every other day it’d be populated by junk no one would want to read and that I can’t believe people can force themselves to write — example titles being “The top 5 best ways to find new clients”, “Top 10 CSS design secrets you can’t live without”, “50 reasons XHTML’s better than HTML”, “101 reasons HTML’s better than XHTML”, “10,000 Clean & Usable WordPress Themes”, “How to use the pen tool in Illustrator”, “The stagnation of web design”.
But I guess you can’t really blame the design bloggers — they keep rehashing the same tripe because there’s nothing else to write about.
It’s been disappointing watching the stagnation of web design the last few years. I guess it’s largely why I’ve been blogging only in fits and starts for so long. Individual browser innovations (of the -webkit and -moz variety) seem like they’ll always be overshadowed by IE’s marketshare. Those who want to adopt and learn CSS and standards have probably already done so. All the innovation and excitement lately has been in frameworks, business models, Javascript, video — none of it in web design. And none of us see anyway that’s really going to change anytime soon. As a result many of us don’t write, while others write vacuous garbage.
I don’t have a solution. But as I wrote before, it all most likely means that — for the first time in a longtime — I’ll just be finding a few new ways to spend my time outside of web design.
An insightful post by Paul Scrivens that closely mirrors my own experience with the early days of web standards and with the way I handled the CSS Reboot. I think refusing to get lost thinking about the past and any old accomplishments you may have made is extremely important for future success. Ever forward.
No offense to the software or creator, but this glitchy, unsynched, confusing, misstepped and poorly narrated video for PureEdit has to be the worst screencast I’ve ever seen.
This is the most in-depth and accurate reporting I’ve seen on TechCrunch in months.
Derek shows he’s willing to take hard steps towards trying to fix Pixish by deleting all the logo, blog header and template assignments that I pointed to just last post and only accepting pictures and illustrations assignments on the site from now on. It’s refreshing when someone accepts criticism in such a constructive way. Good on you Derek and good luck.
A follow-up on Pixish
Well, Gruber, now you’ve gone and done it.
I’ll start by saying that after the way Derek’s handled the slight blowback he’s gotten about Pixish being spec-ish from me and others it makes me respect him even more. His emails to me and his posts and comments on the issue show that he really believes in Pixish and where he sees it going in the future.
I still don’t, but he certainly does.
One thing he wanted to clarify was that calling Pixish a bunch of design contests isn’t quite fair because Pixish:
[I]s not really for design (as in a complete combination of elements) as it is about individual imagery (photos or illustrations) to be used in design.
So, say someone saw an assignment for “a picture of a girl and an orangutan” on the site and just happened to have one on their hard drive. They could quickly post it to Pixish and maybe make a few bucks or win a wristband or something. Not so bad, right?
Unfortunately, already that original utopian vision isn’t being followed. If I look at the assignments as they stand right now — of the 20 on the page, 2 are for blog headers and 5 are for logos (1, 2, 3, 4, 5). 3 more are for t-shirt designs, but it’s somewhat arguable whether that stands on its own as a combination of design elements (though there are certainly plenty of people who accuse Threadless of profiting handsomely from their community’s spec work).
So already 7 — and arguably 10 — out of the 20 new assignments on Pixish are for complete designs like blog headers and logos, not just elements of design like pictures of orangutans. Without strict moderation by the folks at Pixish, logos and site headers and blog designs will continue to pop up as assignments. The only way to stop people and companies from posting stuff like this is for people to not participate in it at all. Derek says so himself in his email:
[I]t’s all opt-in, right? Publishers get no rights to anything you upload unless you submit it to the assignment. And my hope is that, if publishers don’t offer enough of a reason for people to submit, the artists won’t do it and the publisher will be forced to raise their pay - just like in the real world.
Spec work is opt-in in the real world, too. But in the real world one of the biggest arguments against spec work is that it drives down prices and occupational respect because clients see that by using it they get far more for far less. Even designers who don’t do spec work are hurt financially and professionally by the sheer presence of it and the willingness of others, maybe amateurs maybe not, to participate. It’s bad all around and you can’t make it better by hoping people are smart enough to maximize their earnings potential by only participating in the “good deals” — and even then, again, one winner and a bunch of losers — and that people and companies looking for work to be done are good natured enough to pay what good design and imagery are worth.
Lastly, Derek mentioned future plans to foster private assignments and make the site into more of a marketplace. That’s certainly an improvement, but the site can’t currently be judged by what it will be in the future, so once again — just like the assignments for full logos and header designs — it’s a case of the site as it is today not living up to its founder’s excitement and optimism of what it could eventually become.
Pixish can and is being used right now for full-fledged spec work and design contests — and that’s a problem. Is it a problem Derek and team can fix? I honestly do hope so. But I do know it won’t get fixed by just saying the site’s not meant for complete designs when it already is being used that way. Or by hoping people are smart enough to force companies to drive up their prices by only participating in the “good deals”.
Stock photo sites are one thing. Pixish is something completely different. And sorry but until I, and I’m sure several others, see otherwise, I won’t be convinced of anything else.
Update: Shortly after this post was published Derek announced he was taking down all the logo, header design and template assignments, many of which I had mentioned in this post, and would only be accepting pictures and illustrations on Pixish from now on.
Give my regards to Willy
“Back to the drawing board again,
it feels okay to be back to the drawing board again.
The life I love is making things on the interwebs,
and it feels okay to be back to the drawing board again.”
The Pixish logo belongs next to “spec work” on dictionary.com
Derek Powazek seems like a cool guy. He got screwed when he was ousted from his old startup, JPG Magazine, and has done a great job of keeping himself busy with his personal blog, other blog Magazineer and, now, his newest startup Pixish.
Unfortunately, Pixish is not cool. At all. It’s the defintion of spec work.
“Spec work” is when a buyer/client gets several designers’ unpaid work upfront and only pays for the work they deem best. One winner, a bunch of losers. Almost all designers are unabashedly against it. There’s No!Spec, Zeldman’s Don’t Design on Spec and the AIGA’s stance that “doing speculative work seriously compromises the quality of work that clients are entitled to and also violates a tacit, long-standing ethical standard in the communication design profession worldwide”.
The classic argument against spec work, and its wicked step-sister “design contests”, is that it’s like asking a bunch of architects to design the blueprints for your new house and only paying the one you like the best. Or, in the case of contests like the ones Pixish will be holding, you don’t even have to pay them, just give them a prize or something. “Ooh, an iPod shuffle! You mean I can keep it?!”
Derek and the folks at Pixish know this. They even added a response to it on their About page. Saying, basically, “if you don’t like the idea don’t participate” and, “pros like you are lucky, we’re giving talented amateurs a chance to make a name for themselves”. Oh, for crying in a bucket, here we go.
If the architects example is the classic argument against spec work and design contests, “giving amateurs a chance to make a name for themselves” is the classic argument for them. And 50 years ago it might have even made sense. Then there really was lots of talent and only a few ways to showcase it. Television, radio, movies. “You’re up against 300 other plate spinners. Good luck to you, little lady.”
But now we all know this is no longer the case. We’ve got, you know, the web. Blogs. Youtube. digg/reddit/lots of other lowercase social sites. There are no longer just three ways to showcase your talent — there are three bajillion. And if you aren’t getting noticed, sorry, you either aren’t trying hard enough or you suck.
Pixish isn’t going to make any pros out of amateurs. I don’t imagine it’s going to do much of anything for anybody. “I saw your work on Pixish and wanted to offer you this highly lucrative job!” “Oh really?! Thanks Pixish!”
I respect Derek and I certainly respect how hard it is to come up with a great idea and execute on it. I’ve had a lot more failures than I’ve had successes trying to do that exact thing.
But, plain and simple, Pixish is trying to capitalize on spec work on a massive scale. Spec work is bad. Therefore, Pixish is massively bad. In fact, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see a backlash against companies that use Pixish. Emails to CEOs, petitions, etc. And even if there’s no real retaliation against the companies that use it, I know I for one will never participate. And I really hope no one else does either.
Update: Here’s the follow-up post with comments from Derek.
Heroku. Build, test and deploy Rails apps without ever leaving Firefox. Wow, what an app. If this had been around 3 years ago, all those hours and days of frustration getting a server up and running (again!) or updating my local environment (again!) could have instead been used to do productive design and development.
Another design realign
I updated the design night before last in honor of the already defunct Design Deadline deadline. Unfortunately, Design Deadline didn’t generate enough interest, so instead of having just 6 sites that actually met the deadline, I decided to just go ahead and scrap it. No big deal, in fact I’m already working on another side project. This time something totally unrelated to web design …
Anyway, the biggest change — the ambient background — was all Drew Wilson. And man, did he do a great job. I hope everyone else likes it as much as I do, because I can’t stop starting at it. Thanks again Drew!
I also updated a few other things here and there to give the site better spacing, padding, etc. Nothing drastic, just polish. Next up I’m going to look at possible color changes, a few new categories and, most importantly, better more original (and oft updated) content.
Onward!
Five historical blog posts. “HOWTO: Some Guy Compares Thee to a Summer Day.”
Jeff Bridge’s site is a great example of how you don’t need something flashy or trendy — instead just unique and compelling — to standout on the web. This site reminds me of the good ol’ days, before blog templates ruthlessly ruled the land.
In A better way to start a business “[a]uthor Scott Shane offers 10 tips to improve your odds of startup success” — among them “start with a team” (”half of new businesses are started by individuals, ‘even though the performance of new businesses founded by teams is better’”), “sell to businesses, not consumers” (”90% of the fastest growing private companies in this country sell to businesses”) and “form a corporation” (”new corporations outperform new sole proprietorships on almost every possible measure”).
James Edwards created a Doom/Wolfenstein 3D game walkthough using only CSS and Javascript. Impressive use of available technology or just a fun proof of concept?
Notes from last year’s Y Combinator Startup School that I’d never seen before.
Research time. Let’s do some book learning!
I ordered The Illusions of Entrepreneurship and Finding Fertile Ground, both by Scott Shane, from Amazon today. Really looking forward to reading them.
A little more on the web design community
Following up on yesterday’s post ZzZzzzZzZZzzZzZzZZzzzZzz (heh, now that’s a permalink). So, what are you supposed to do when the online community you used to be pretty active in — a community that was once full of really interesting people, work, and new ideas, a community that helped you get work and make money, as well as got you into your current career — no longer holds your interest?
Do you step up and make it interesting yourself, or just move on and participate in something that’s as interesting and inspiring as the old community used to be? Right now I’m leaning towards the latter.
This doesn’t mean I’ll change jobs or careers, not by a longshot, especially since I love them both. Just that I’ll maybe start using my freetime differently than I have the last 6 years.