Welcome. Glad you could make it. This is the Institute. Consider us your friend. Maybe your family. This is a place to discuss our craft. A place for learning to happen. A place for criticism and comment. This is a place for web designers. Welcome to my home.
A few house rules. Actually just one. Criticise work not people. Upfront right now, you will be banned if you break that rule. I’m not fucking about on that one. To further that, I’d like to add one guideline. Let’s keep it positive. I don’t mind constructive debating about technique or style (remembering of course that aesthetic taste is the subject of opinion), but let’s keep the slagging for the bar.
Okay, done with that, it shall not be mentioned further unless required. Why *start* a blog in 2010? Okay, yes, honestly it feels really weird starting a blog in 2010. But hey, I felt there wasn’t enough of this happening. You see lots of very good and important inspiration blogs. Lots of tutorial websites. Some really good blogs that are more magazines. Something happened about a month ago. Brendan Dawes of mN wrote a post which I’m not gonna even try to summerize or paraphrase for fear of getting it wrong. You can read it at his site.
“I’ve got to say this. The UK web design scene is often just self serving, indulgent bullshit perpetuated by friends of friends. Count me out.”
The comments exploded. It was interesting. I agreed with him, but not because I think UK designers do this. It’s a global issue. It’s not even that I think that we all pat each others backs and never criticise someone. The problem is that it only shows up on twitter and there’s no way for you to properly critique a website in 140 characters. It has been done before, Kyle Meyer created Typesites which took a critical look at websites featuring heavy type design. He had some pros and cons in each review. It was great. Brand New does the same thing, but mostly for identity/logo design. Brand New is probably one of my favourite (yes I’m Canadian, this is also being edited whilst Canada wins the Gold at the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics, hence the image above) websites. It’s definitely a daily read. This is the plan for this website. A place to look at new web redesigns and critique them. Knowing full well that I was never a part of the business planning so don’t know all the details behind design choices. So this will be opinion. Mostly my opinion. I hope we can discuss the review in the comments. That’s something I look forward to doing. I am absolutely a fan of discussing our craft. Even debating it. In theory we can all learn from it.
Remember in art school (for those of you that went to art school) when we all stood around and got to have a professional judge our work in front of our peers? I don’t know about you, but I loved it. Well, looking back on it I loved it. At the time I absolutely hated getting ripped by my instructor. That said, I feel that I’m a better person for it.
There you have it. In a long winded near ranty almost essay (hamburger essay I think). It’s only ranty because Canada just won the gold and I’ve had a few beers and some nachos. Go Canada! Ehm, sorry. That’s the plan. I’m going to try and stay positive for the most part. I mean, obviously because this is a website for critiquing other websites yes there will have to be the pointing out of some things that just don’t work for me. Doesn’t mean I think you’re a terrible person. Let’s see how it goes.
* Now that I made it all the way to the bottom I noticed what seems like a lot of link baiting at the top. Sorry for that. Not intentional.
** Just editing and taking screen shots of the first two reviews now. Life generally gets in the way. Plus, I wanted to wait a bit so my opinions won’t have that immediate gut reaction blurt of who cares (spoiler: the first two have keyboard based navigation). See you here in a few days. Thanks for caring. 
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