almost 6 years ago from Mike Kingsborough, Designer
I find an overwhelming amount of focus on digital website and application design within the design related topics on Designer News. For me, It's become a little exhausting and disappointing when watching my feed. Why aren't other design disciplines represented here? Like Interior and architectural design or furniture design....or industrial/physical design. Is there no appetite for this?
I'm with you on the "diversity of design is important", but don't you feel like maybe this question is a little like going into a donut shop and asking where all the fucking muffins are?
I see the point that your trying to make, but I can't accept that :P. There are different flavours and styles of donuts which represent our different mediums. But donuts is design and the establishment is representative of critical –end user focused–thinking.
I agree — and to beat the analogy into the ground, I definitely spend too much time in donut shops. I go other places for my industrial/architectural/hardware/3D/illustration muffins, but I don't think anyone would be sad if you brought some of them here.
No, because the shop in your examples does not say "Food Store" but says "Donut Shop". "Design" is way too broad of a topic for this community. This community is an extremely niche subset of an already niche industry.
Simple. If you like something... post it.
A few years back, there was a guy posting concept art. I voted every one.
Just submit it. Real designers will appreciate it. Coders... meh.. not so much. But there's room for everyone here... <3
This!
Submit it if you have the sources. Ask friends to join who represent those domains.
I've been here for over 2 years. I've complained a lot about this in the past too, but DN has never been about anything but UI and web design.
I've come to the unfortunate conclusion that this isn't just a problem with DN alone, but one that is present in the UI design community at large. Out of all of the design disciplines, I feel that UI/UX design disconnects itself most from other ones.
While "Designer News," should really be called "UI Designer News," if you read any random "design" article on Medium that discusses "design" as a whole, it will most likely be about UI design, with some random Dieter Rams quotes. Dieter Rams and Jony Ive seem to be about the only designers outside of UI design that UI designers seem to know.
At the same time, UI designers seem to like to enjoy criticizing or downplaying the very idea of aesthetics, even though they work on what's a visual product. Meanwhile they have no problem with following aesthetic trends. This of course wouldn't be a problem if visuals didn't mean anything, except they do. In fact we have an entire discipline with a hundred year history dedicated to using visuals to communicate called graphic design. And thus we have UI design work that have little diversity.
Agreed.
virtual hug
Perhaps people working in those segments you mentioned don't have time for BS content and stupid comments.
He speaks!
That's unfortunate if that's the case. The fact we're unable to casually indulge without being let down really says something.
Ever heard about this thing called life? I highly recommend it, so many opportunities you can indulge yourself into.
I've often wondered this as well. A possible reason could be that since digital designers are spending basically their entire day on the internet, they frequent the site most often. And if there's mostly digital folks around here, you're gonna get articles mainly pertaining to their interests...
That being said I'd also love to see more representation from other design disciplines. I guess it just takes people to post about them.
This question makes the assumption that all you need to attract all these architects and furniture designers is "more appetite" and completely ignores the very real practical challenges of community building.
Attracting a completely new audience to a site like DN would require manually seeding it with new interior design content, going to existing interior/architecture communities and recruiting new members, doing cross-promotion deals and taking out ads… And all this at the risk of alienating the current community who will complain that things are changing, and for very little pay-off.
So I guess there's your answer!
I lot of users here are from the days of LayerVault, so that's probably your answer.
I think the biggest reason comes from the DN about page: "Designer News is a large, global community of people working in design and technology or those interested in the topics."
It's that "design and technology" piece that I think leads to the focus on those aspects - from the beginning, DN was VERY focused on web and product design (and the tech behind it) vs trying to be a "design" community.
But design and technology is ubiquitous in all industries and varies in its form factor. DN's description is inclusive of those things and everything– I think it's us, who've steered its focus and subject matter. Why do we care so much about another medium article or some small change that a large brand makes to their website in hopes of making a positive usability impact? I use to care–or at least I thought I did–but I don't think I do anymore. I find the critical opinion found throughout the community of http://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/ often elevates my game in the brand identity territory. I guess I was looking for something similar to fulfil the rest of my interests. I work in digital every day and have for the last 15 years, but if that was my only passion I would have blown my brains out long ago.
hmmm, critical opinion from brandnew? armin's, of course. readers', not so much. just daily "this reminds me of...". i think the diversity problem is everywhere but it's just worst here. dont get misled by the website's name. really here is ui-designer-news.
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