With this article I want to give you a little status update & share some behind the scenes with you. I'm personally proud that in addition to my weekly email list, I continue to write & publish even more articles now on this blog. Currently averaging at around 2-3 a week.
So let's get into the updates, but first, I want to answer a question I got pretty often recently:
Why do you write this blog? Whats your goal?
My goal is simple. I imagine creating a resource for every designer & maker, especially those in the making where you can find practical tips & tricks, but also thought pieces on design, psychology and self improvement.
When I did some research on design blogs, I noticed that most big design blogs/magazines are run by bigger corporations and articles are sadly not even written by practicing designers. And it makes sense, these blogs are just regular publishing networks fueled by advertising money.
On top of it, I'm a believer in taking down the barriers of the design industry and make it more approachable for people who want to enter the field. Our industry needs more great designers, but looking at the recent years I feel like we're making it more complicated for new comers to enter.
So with this blog, I simply try to open my mind to you. Topics range from pure practical articles such as what camera equipment I use, to more philosophical articles, or even personal experiments.
New Update: SEARCH
YES! The DESK blog now has a search feature. The goal with this feature was to make search something more than just a utility tool. We wanted to make Search feel like its own destination where you can discover new articles you haven't read before.
That's why the layout of search completely takes over the site, you basically enter the "search mode" and just by typing in some letters, the search results will show up LIVE.
I hope you enjoy this new way of browsing the DESK blog.
New Update: Site Transitions
I'm not sure if you noticed, but we added subtle site transitions. If you click on an article, or navigate between pages there is a little wave effect that you should see.
It's just a tiny little detail that we tried to optimize as much as possible to make sure it doesn't influence the loading time too much. We first built it with paper.js but after noticing some performance issues on mobile we switched to SVG animations.
It's a nice little detail, I hope you enjoy it.
New Update: Read More
As an ongoing effort I'm trying to improve the way you read on this blog. To make this even easier we now added a "Read More" section right underneath each article. My goal essentially is to inspire you to continue reading or find another article for your next reading section.
Right now the Read More section consists of four articles. Two are the most recent ones, the other two are two random articles from the same category. And then of course, we show the Top5 most popular articles.
Besides that, we worked on many other smaller improvements and I hope you enjoy the DESK blog so far. Expect more articles like this one on the feature, always keep improving!
And please, your FEEDBACK is more than welcome. The best place to send me your thoughts is always on Twitter @vanschneider.