Smashing Magazine is probable the most famous web design blog. It is due to the fact that it was one of the first blogs treating web design subjects, Smashing Magazine being founded in 2006. Nowadays, it represents an interesting story about what passion and hard work mean – the guys behind this blog having conferences all over the world and constantly they are launching interesting and very useful books. The purpose of this article isn’t to highlight how amazing is this blog or its owners. My idea is to share with you a fresh thought of mine: how far evolved web design blogosphere! It’s true, none of us allows himself the luxury of wasting much time, but from time to time is welcomed to reflect about some facts. Yeah, web design blogosphere evolved a lot!
You may say that I am not modest…it’s possible, but it’s necessarily to mention that I have been writing web design articles from mid-2008 and blogging evolved a lot. It’s very different the way I was writing in 2008 or 2009 and how I am doing it today.
At its beginning, blogging wasn’t as important as today, we should be honest and accept that lots of Internet users were reticent about what blogging supposed. Writing about web design and publishing the articles was mostly for fun – something new to try. Somehow, it was considered a new trend amongst web designers. Willing or not, few people regarded the web design blogosphere as a reliable and useful source of information. It’s true, we are talking about the “primitive” era of blogging.
Across time, web design blogging turned into a serious job and the quality of blogs went up pretty considerably. People use more and more the information shared on various blogs and become obvious that a self-respecting web designer should constantly check some blogs. Of course, there were enough negative aspects: not everytime the quality of the information provided was satisfactory, some posts were very poor and others were “too” inspired from other sources. Anyway, it was a matter of time until the best ones that really care about blogging became famous and the ones that were trying to gain some money without any endeavour disappeared.
Some people consider that is a subjective opinion, but the responsive design wouldn’t be so famous and the web design community wouldn’t accept it so fast without the “help” of bloggers. The entire web design blogosphere presented the advantages, but also the disadvantages of the responsive design and many posts created lots of hot debates about various issues. Many designers preferred to write blog posts sharing some conclusions of their works and of course, these were very appreciated by readers. Briefly, the new manner of creating websites, specially adapted for mobile browsing, has many unresolved issues, but due to the web design bloggers, many of these were highly debated by readers, including most of the web designers, and sometimes fruitful conclusions were formed. The bloggers created the needed buzz around responsive design and helped a lot in identifying the proper solutions.
On the other hand, the web design bloggers didn’t write only about responsive design; everything design related is debated. To may better see the difference between the quality of the posts, I highly recommend enjoying reading posts about color theory from 2008 and from 2013. As long as the color theory didn’t exponentially evolved in this period of time, it is the best example to see the quality difference.
Definitely, the job of a web design blogger isn’t very easy – he must be fully updated to the latest news else his/her posts won’t be read…and in blogging world, no reader is very equivalent of no money, no value…
Personally, I consider that a blogger is at the junction of many fields and it is extremely difficult to write only interesting posts. In fact, a blogger is the summation of the three people: a journalist, a web designer, an advertiser. Let’s explore all these “facets” of a blogger!
A journalist
You can’t be a good blogger if you aren’t connected to the rules of good writing. A good blog post should be well written, having no grammar mistakes and most important, following a logical enhancement. No matter how talented or skilled someone is in his field, having no disposition to writing is impossible to be appreciated by blog readers.
A designer
It’s impossible to write about something without having a solid grasp about…or it’s possible, but the quality of the writing is very poor. In conclusion, a blogger shouldn’t be a super star designer, but it’s mandatory to have the hands dirty with latest web design trends and issues.
An advertiser
It may surprise you, but a good blogger is a good advertiser. Daily are posted many useful and interesting web design articles, therefore, in order to have many visitors is required to let them know about the blog and the articles just posted. How is it possible? Here come the advertisement part of the blogger that may resolve this aspect. Social media seems the most accessible tool, but surely there are many other possibilities.
Are you a blogger writing about web design? I am very interested in having your impressions about how web design blogs evolved and most important, how a blogger treating this subject evolved. The comment form is for you, feel free to add your thoughts!
