Solaera Web Design -- Maryland Web Design for Small Businesses

Yes, it’s been some time since I posted here and I need to confess to a terrible attack of lack of inspiration over the past two months. I’ve been feeling a little disconnected from the work I was trying to get done and it made it hard to post anything of particular import (besides the “I’m still not thrilled about the iPad” post that I considered writing several times).

In the last few days however, I finally got back some motivation to start doing things, and actually put together a whole pile of stuff for my Design 365 blog (which I was/am also behind on). This burst of energy didn’t come out of nowhere, though, and I can actually pin down precisely what caused it. I went over and took a peek at Dribbble, which has only just recently opened for public consumption. It’s a forum for designers and, as near as I can tell, pretty exclusive as to who can get in, and, while very intimidating to look at, also gave me a bit of a jolt. I was suddenly eager to get good enough to get these people’s attentions, and more to the point, I suddenly wanted feedback.

The thing is…it’s possible to want to make art for art’s sake, but it’s also really nice to have an audience, and even more important to *want* to have an audience. From a design standpoint, that is really what we’re all working towards — we want to make something to attract attention. And from an emotional viewpoint, we all most want to have attention from people we trust to know what they’re talking about. And it’s been occurring to me a lot lately that, for all the hugeness and (sometimes) apparent impenetrability of the design community on the web, the availability of that feedback is a really important aspect of developing in this field. There’s so many people out there willing to give help, advice, and inspiration, that it really does make it feasible, in a way that I don’t think it is in a lot of other businesses, to feel both motivated and capable of learning and developing and growing and becoming better.

Soon afterwards, I poked my head in at the weekly “Design Community Twitter Hours” where I’ve been attending more or less regularly for a couple months. DCTH is an interesting phenomenon; it’s a group of people getting together to talk shop in 140 characters or less, and I’ve found it immensely stimulating. It’s not exactly as good as going to a conference or something like that, but from it I’ve gotten a lot of interesting tidbits about the design process and insight into the outlook of a lot of professional designers — and, almost startlingly, have found myself able to contribute here and there to the discussion. This in itself has been enough to help keep me engaged; having people to discuss your activities with you can make them seem a heck of a lot more interesting really quickly, even if there’s not really the room in 140 characters to go into anything in depth.

This particular week, however, having been energized by the idea of feedback, I asked for other communities besides Dribbble where designers could get intelligent responses to work they were doing and was directed towards ConceptFeedback.com. I’m in the process of posting my first concept there and will provide a review of the service later; already I can say I’m pretty sure I’m a fan. I actively could not find a design that had not been commented on at least once, and three more came in while I was browsing, so it seems like an active community, and more to the point, the comments do in fact seem intelligent and helpful. I don’t expect to get great reviews all the time, but I don’t mind that as long as they’re helpful reviews, which is what these seem to be leaning towards.

Where I am going with this long rambly post is that I realized in the last few days that community is a very important part (for me at least) of productivity and inspiration. The ability to talk to people who I trust to know as well as or better than me what I am going about doing is highly motivating, and to any of you out there who have been sounding boards for me so far (or will be in the future), thank you.