As a member of the AIGA/NY Chapter, I received an email a couple of weeks ago about another great event they were hosting. (wish I could go to all of them, hey make package deals). This was Fresh Dialogue 25, it revolves around design blogs and their influence on us as designers, the craft, as a business model and new ways to interact with the design community. On the panel was not only a great set of design websites, but designer and thinkers who understand their role in the blogisphere.

Moderated by Alice Twemlow, the panel consisted of Khoi Vinh, Design Director of NYTimes.com and Subtraction.com blog. Allan Chochinov, Editor-in-Chief at Core77, and Design Educator at the SVA MFA program. Tina Roth Eisenberg aka SwissMiss, founder of swissmiss blog and studio & last but not least was Josh Rubin, founder & EIC of CoolHunting.com.

These blogs and authors offer great resources for design products, critical writing, commentary on design, cool finds and overall interesting views on the world. I was lucky enough to hove some free time in my schedule to make it to the New School to hear some insight!

As a designer that has a blog, I thought it important to immerse myself and hear the inner workings of what and how design bloggers think. C’mon how often do you get a chance to be in the same room with these people?

They spoke of the importance and sometimes unimportance of a design blog. Khoi mentioned how the design blog is passed its peak and we need to find other ways to engage our audience, and how designer could easily move into more of an entrepreneurial role in the future. He brought up a good point from one of his followers on twitter.

This is from a ReTweet he sent out..

It seems true that we maybe at a pass, design blogs aren’t as fresh anymore. What we read is not always about design, but of Tricks, Tutorials and Hacks. (don’t get me wrong, I love those posts) But rarely do we read the multitude of good design articles like on SpeakUp & Design Observer.

It seemed like there is definitely room for blogs to evolve and become simpler and more visual, just like FFFFound & Flickr. Sometimes we need to remember that it’s all connected. From a Thought -> Idea -> Concept -> Post -> Brand -> Platform … these all snowball from a common place, the content. It is what engages readers and make them wanting to come back. Posts with great design products or the author giving up something of themselves, that personal touch makes it worth the ride these blogger take us on and make us feel part of their world. Take note, that whatever these bloggers are doing, they are doing it right and gaining credibility, readership and loyalty.

But please do take my word for it, check out their respective blogs for inspiration, entertainment and all around info about our design world.
Khoi Vihn > Subtraction.com
Allan Chochinov > Core77.com
Tina Roth Eisenberg > Swiss-Miss.com
Josh Rubin > CoolHunting.com

Special thanks the AIGA/NY & Parson New School for putting on this event with such an interesting panel and giving me the spark to write a new post.