design portals dying? why?
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- calcio0
yah, or www.delijst.net, which doesn't mean anything to most of you, but for a lot of us Dutch (or Flanders) peeps in the webdesign branche, it has been our daily starting page (as newstoday, surfstation, k10k, DiK or pixelsurgeon has been for many of you).
I guess that designportals is a thing of our generation and now that we all are 'growing up', we have less time to maintain them, cos I know that is extremely time consuming. But with a partner, kids and a more demanding job, where do you find the time to also keep a portal site up and running. Respect to all of them though, cos they have been our source of inspiration and knowledge for many years.
It should be the new generation (age 17-23) taking over with new and exciting designportal initiatives... but where are they? Is today's designer's generation already so blase?
- it's not that they're blase, it's more that the model for portals like pixelsurgeon and lounge72 is a bit outdated and the kids now appear to be using their own blogs, syndicating more content themselves and generally using things like facebook and myspace etc.jamble
- Faction180
looks like kai heuser (founder of lounge72) posts here in the editiors choice now.
- Studiospooky0
I miss the jolly *NEWS TO DAY" jingle lady.
I think we are seeing the birth and death of the first generation of online social experience. I think these will things just burn out as we find we have little left to say once the excitement recedes and real life kicks us in the pipe. When I was a kid FM CB radios were leaglised in the UK and for two years the working classes went fucking nuts for CB radio. This was pre-mobile communication so the whole thing was wild and exciting. After two years though we had really run out of things to discuss, sitting in our cold Morris Marinas every evening, and the entire community simultaneously sold up its gear and retired from the airwaves permanently. The revolution was over.
For me, something like QBN is a vital part of my day at the moment becuase I run a one-man studio and spend many busy days working in isolation. I talk abstract crap on something called The Pile, which is a closed group of creatives from around the world and latey I've been posting here too becuase The Pile is beginning to creak. To drop some stupid nonsense into a forum such as this or the Pile is an isolation breaker for me, but I increasingly find it doesn't cut the mustard so much now, and more and more I resort instead to walking briskly up my high street with no pants and trousers on and defecating outside the florists.
- God I'm a schmuck. I forgot I was browsing old threads and replied to this one. WHAT A DOOBER!Studiospooky
- haha, nice post though! insight and hilarious endingFizik
- tparsons0
I remember when it was only Kaliber10000.com and K10K.com... Must be getting old.
- johnny_h0
It's just not as exciting as it was. I remember k10k was brilliant, years ago. Also dreamless, but surfstation, three oh, DiK all just seemed to not move on, dreamless and k10k sent me to NT when they went off for a while (about 6 years ago) and now NT has become QBN.
Perhaps everyone just got busier with their own jobs and needed to pay their mortgages.- i still miss dreamless! it was great while it lasted.bigtrick
- bruised_blood0
I very much miss Pixelsurgeon. Great for design sites, sure, but also a constant supply of 'check this out!' silly stuff...
I feel so uninformed on silly things these days... :(
- calcio0
404?
- thismanslife0
QBN PWNZ them all. Possibly.
- Jaline0
I think I used to like NT first, then PixelSurgeon, then Design Is Kinky, and then the others (like k10k, Lounge72, Australian inFront, etc.).
Now it's basically just QBN.
- go AusINFRONT!forcetwelve
- DiK needed an overhaul for waaaaaaaay too long...kalkal
- quagmire0
its the blogs...
- emecks0
I know why design portals are dying (and a lot of other things too).
They became too popular see, SEOs and SEMs discovered this years back and started trying to launch their "virals" through net savvy groovsters... soon after that it came to the attention of "the marketing department" and they started it too - now there are companies actively recruiting poor wannabes into positions where they do fuck all all day except post their shite on "design portals" in the vain hope they won't get called out for being the cunts they are.
Two perfect examples:
http://www.qbn.com/topics/538011…
http://www.qbn.com/topics/537996…
Je rest mon case.
- kalle0
kiiroi anyone?
- kiiroi is the biggest mystery ever in the design world for me. I never *got* what happened.Jaline
- LOLximeraLabs
- it was the yellow one. that's what happened!monNom
- Randd0
my fear is that design will become increasingly ubiquitous, that every citizen of the earth will sell t shirts and other vainglorious retail items
- Randd0
by the way, have you visited my online store yet?
- 23kon0
praystation's Dreamless was a great forum and bourned the dreamless conferences in the same cities that FlashForward was showing in. This was a cheaper alternative but with much cooler and underground speakers.
ah those were the days eh?
i think i've still got a dreamless tshirt somewhere- http://www.gtwreck.c…
i've used that index so many times in the past few years trying to track down old dreamless buddies.bigtrick - ...dreamless buddies.bigtrick
- http://www.gtwreck.c…
- ukit0
oh the glory days of Designgraphik Serving Phour
- nephronim0
im part of a site that has a section for pieces of interest, not just a design portal but thats what is updated more often.
We have been looking for people to submit links and even join the team as contributers for out articles section.
We have found it really hard to find people that will volunteer their time. I just think the community spirit is flagging a bit recently. As for the cost of running a design portal site, well unless u want terriible google links and ads it gets costly.
Its a bit of an uphill struggle i find, it would be great for people to get more involved in these kind of sites.
- Faction180
i think part of it is moving on to bigger and better things. some of it is temporary - remeber: computerlove died last year, and was resurrected later on bigger and better with a lot of "social media" features. i also think some of it is natural turnover, as some of the "veterans" are moving into higher-level and more demanding work and don't necessarily want to tweak on their sites until 4:30am after putting in a 13 hour day at the studio.