In All Reality

A little over a month ago, I noticed an interesting job posting on Krop: Blog Writer.  It was for a new web design blog and resource site, and it sounded really intriguing.  So, I thought “What the heck?” and sent off a brief introduction and invited the powers that be to look at the content I was pushing out on my site.  Long story short, they decided to give me a shot and I now have a post up and running on their site.  It’s generated a lot of interesting feedback, and I highly recommend checking it out and weighing in with your insights.

But I don’t want to stroke my own ego; I really want to put in a plug for what is rapidly becoming a very important resource for the creative web professional.  Web Designer Depot (henceforth known as WDD since I’m lazy) has only been around for about 2 months, at least going by the date of their first post.  It’s obvious that a great deal of thought and preparation were put into the launch of this site, as evidenced by the job postings, design efforts, and all around marketing that I’ve noticed surrounding its sudden appearance.  They’ve even been featured in the WordPress Showcase.  Their mission statement as seen on their About Us page:

We love design and are passionate about it in all its shapes and forms. Our vision is to make WDD a great showcase for this passion and feed a worldwide audience of savvy designers eager to learn more and share their knowledge with the design community.

It’s not stated outright, but this seems to imply that they view the web as a sort of merging point where all prior forms of design contribute to produce something that is more than what it has come before; something more refined and more tempered by the direct responses and involvement of communities, yet fluid by definition.  That’s awesome.  Go mission statement.

WDD has come off the starting block with a lot of really interesting posts.  There are the ubiquitous posts and tutorials about Photoshop, and nearly every post title follows the current trend of enumerating the points you’ll cover (guilty!), but that’s fine.  Every blog needs its core of those type of posts; they never cease to be useful.  But some of my favorites thus far have been about topics of a slightly more involved variety, such as:

• How NOT To Design A Logo
• Why Mood Boards Matter
• Designing Outside Your Comfort Zone
• Video Game Design Between 1990-2008

Anyway, check it out.  Subscribe to the feed.  Read.  Share.  Enjoy.  Hopefully you’ll see more of me on there too :)