Why I love the Design Community: My Guest Post
I run down 8 top points that make the design community a great place
Ahh yes, the Design Community. I love it! This is the topic of a recent guest post I wrote over at MyInkBlog. Below is an extract from the article, but you can read the full the article here. Please leave your feedback and comments on the actual post rather than here.
Why I love the Design Community & Industry
Choosing what career path you wish to take is one of the biggest decisions you will ever make in your life. And people take a lot of things into consideration when choosing their job, but did you ever stop and think about what the community around your job choice might be like, and how that could effect your choice.
Without doubt the Design community is one of the most unique industries to be a part of, what other profession would you see professionals going out of their way to make a tutorial of how to do something and make it public for all of their “competitors” to read and learn from. It’s a strange logic, but one that makes sense and ultimately creates a community and industry that is always moving forward and evolving together.
I’ve put together a list of my top 10 reasons why the design community is such an amazing and diverse place, and why I love being a part of it. *The links & examples I give are only there to support my points, and are not the main focus of the article.
01. Freebies
A word which a lot of people love to hear, it is something which you find a lot of in the design community. Giving something away for free to other designers to help them improve their own work and profession is rare in many other jobs. But in the design community designers love creating things for other designers and giving top quality products away for free.
Here are some of my top Freebie Picks:
Function Icon Set (128 Free Icons)
Agregado: A Free Wordpress Theme
30 Sites to Download Free Stock and Royalty Free Images
Tutorial9: Dirty Spray Brushes
02. Sharing Information & Knowledge
The design community is very geared towards making the industry and community better, this explains why it’s very easy to find yourself getting involved in the design community, and start learning some tricks of the trade in all aspects of the industry. There’s tutorials on all sorts, everything from finding clients & managing your work to creating big elaborate graphic design pieces and tutorials going into great detail on all aspects of web design & development. Being part of a community that is so willing to share tips tricks and information is quite a privilege, and while the information is out there it would be silly not to take advantage of it, there is always something you can pick up from any tutorial (even if the end result isn’t always mind-blowing)
Great examples to show what I mean:
All of these not only have a great focus on tutorial and education, but there is also a great community around them, providing feedback and allowing other people to share further tips and techniques. So for me, tutorial sites are quite an important part of the design community.
Read the Full Article
Coninue reading the full article >
Written by liam on September 16, 2008
Spinal said:
Wow…Nice tips ! Thanks for sharing your knoweldge :).
My latest post: Icônes gratuites au format vectoriel
Sean Baker said:
Nice post, Liam! You did your homework and it shows. Really good article, my friend.
liam said:
@ Sean, thanks man. Just realized over the past month just how comfortable the community around me is, so felt it deserved a mention
Appreciate the comment man.
Andrew Houle said:
Liam, Thanks so much for writing this post. It’s people like you that make the design community so great to work with! Thanks for the awesome article and the great links! I’m constantly amazed by the quality of your work. The time you put in, really shows up in your final products.
My latest post: Why I love the Design Community & Industry
Darjan said:
I really liked your post, a lot of truth there. The design community is really positive, it’s the clients who need to get fixed
My latest post: Light painting photography technique with combination of piano and music
flisterz said:
Love the post, Liam. It really motivates me to keep on contributing and being passionate about design and the community. Great job
Sunday Weekly Roundup #29 - 09/21/2008 » Blog at veanndesign.com said:
[...] Why I love the Design Community: My Guest Post [...]
dinu said:
very true
thanks for the post …
Adam said:
@Darjan True; Clients often have no sense of taste; design or even the slightest clue, I could mock something absolutely amazing up in photoshop; to have it shot down for something friggin god aweful!
Chris Dawes said:
The design community is one of thousands of communities of the same.
I’m part of three or four different communities in web development and find exactly the same thing as you have found in the design community. In fact the design community regularly use tools that where designed for free use, and likewise we regularly use designs that where designed for free use.
No matter what community you are in these same points are raised, hence why we call it community!
Tom Ross said:
I can’t believe that I’ve only just come across this post. Thanks for mentioning PSDFAN, I really agree with all of your sentiments about community. Great post.
My latest post: Daily Image Inspiration #2
Kazeltwy said:
Hi webmaster!
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