Dribbble. Inspiring or incestuous?
Posted by Design Drops in Website templates on March 4th, 2011
It’s been about a year since Dribbble left beta and entered the real (online) world.
According to its own PR, Dribble is “show and tell for creatives”. It’s a place for designers to post small shots of what they are working on (400×300 pixels) and for other members to give feedback. A social network for designers, if you will.
You can register as a spectator to view the content, save your favorites and even put your self down as a “prospect”; but to actually become a fully-fledged member of the community, you need to be invited. Therein lies the problem.
Like any invite-only community, dissenting voices tend to be drowned out – if they ever get an invite in the first place. It’s more usual that the members will only invite others whose artwork they like – which often means those who share similar styles and views get a Guernsey, whereas unique artists might miss out.
Also, it soon becomes apparent with only the most cursory of glances, that much of the feedback is of the “Oooh, aaah, dude this is aweome” variety, rather than true constructive design criticism.
Finally, it proves something I have long suspected…that designers often design for other designers, rather than for the general public or, even worse,for the client (don’t worry, writers do the same).
It does, like any social media, have some big plusses.
Firstly, and most importantly for the members, it’s rewarding and comforting to know you are part of a community. It’s a basic human need. I can imagine that for freelancers in particular to be a part of a community of like-minded artists might be the encouragement needed to get on with work rather than head ot the beach 
.
And some of the designs are truly wonderful. I particularly enjoy browsing through the “rookies” to see what’s new. (China’s xiaomaohua had joined just one hour ago at the time of writing this post.)
Since it allows non-members to download and save images, it can also be a great way to boost your reference portfolio.
And, as designer Jacob Cass reports in his blog, it can even lead to job offers.
But do these positives outweigh the negatives? And what can Dribbble do to accentuate the good aspects of the site, rather than continue to go down the path to eventual oblivion?
Might I suggest a “audience vote” where anyone – not just members – can cast a vote for new prospects? And once a prospect gets a certain amount of votes, they get an invite. A bit like Survivor, except you get votes to get on to the island rather than off.
Are you a member? Do you want to be a member?
Do you think Dribbble continues to have relevance a year on? Or is it slowly devolving into a designer love-in? Here at Design Drops, we’re happy to listen to dissenting opinions.
Design links to amuse and inspire
Posted by Design Drops in Graphic design on February 25th, 2011
Here at Design Drops, we realise that this is not the only thing online that designers enjoy, so we thought we’d share some links that we have been reading lately.
It’s hard to go past www.clientsfromhell.net, a hilarious contributor-driven blog about the kinds of requests/discussion/suggestions that designers have to put up with every day. Some real gems here, including:
As far as the logo goes, I’m just looking for the name in a circle with some fire shit around it.
There’s always something new and it’s worth bookmarking.
On a similar theme, US based web design company Agency Fusion, shows it has a sense of humour with its Make My Logo Bigger Cream advertisement, which has generated more than 800,000 unique hits and resulted in 700-plus calls about its services. It’s what the rest of us dream about.
Travis Boyles, a disgruntled copywriter who also has a dream and an amusing turn of phrase, has posted on craigslist that I’d do Anything. I hope he got a gig.
Or how about Ikea-inspired instruction for building Stonehenge?
And if you’re bored, you can always test your knowledge with the brand alphabet quiz. It’s not an easy as you might think.
We’d love to hear if any readers have some fun links to share. Post a comment with the link and we’ll feature them in a future post.
Top 10 logo designs 2010
Posted by Design Drops in Graphic design on February 19th, 2011
So, we’re a little late with this one, it being nearly the end of February 2011, but we’ve been taking our time mulling over some fantastic logos created worldwide during 2010.
It was a tough decision, but being entirely subjective and based on nothing but our opinion, we’d like to offer you Design Drops top 10 new logos of last year, in no particular order. Some show great use of negative space, others are witty, but all are eye-catching and creative.
The Optimistic Beverages (Helms Workshop) logo at the top of the page topped pretty much every list at the time, so we are just one of its many fans. But it is a truly great design for a start-up craft brewing company in Austin, Texas. We wish them luck.
Bob’s House for Dogs (Stacie Paul) is a not-for-profit that houses stray and unwanted dogs.
The above logo for a UK-based website design company was created by 25-year old Serbian designer Shewa.
Is it a map of Africa? Or a face in profile? Great piece of creative from Dan Designs.
Wonderfully evocative image from Yeria Elsafan, who unfortunately doesn’t seem to have a website to link to.
2011, the Year of the Rabbit. Not quite twee, not quite cute, but very interesting logo from Bercea Oleg, another designer that doesn’t appear to have a website.
OK Textil is a Spanish-based wholesale distributor of promotional apparel. Sublima Comunicacion designed this simple, but effective, logo.
Clever use of design elements from Joanna Malik.
We love this innovative design for a restaurant, thanks to India’s visuAlchemy.
Human creates original music and sound design for advertising, TV , film and interative media. This design, by Paul Driver of Social UK, includes a typographic tweak that makes it stand out.
We would love to hear from you as to your favourite logos of last year.
Or perhaps you have some that are truly awful, that we can showcase in a future post.