An Idea I Had...

Call me creative - but I have new ideas popping into my head all the time. Possible websites, business ventures, a cool idea for a website layout. Whatever it is, I usually jot the ideas down and eventually decide against them.

But.. recently I have come up with a cool idea (or at least I think it is ). I thought it would be amazing if a bunch of designers, programmers and developers could get together to offer a free design based e-zine.

Basically, each designer involved would write various articles on design. The site would also contain all the latest design news, reviews and even tutorials.

What do all you designers (and non-designers) think about this? I personally am not aware of any large-scale websites that already do this.. so I think it would be a great idea.

Is there anyone who would be willing to work on this with me? or am I just a crazy guy with another idea? lol

it is a cool idea, but if I get it right (it's 9 am here and I haven't had any sleep yet - at moments like this it is kind of hard to understand things right) it is not very original. For instance DC is based around contests, but it still was planned to provide design information, news and tutorials... many design related websites work in the same way, they just have "features" and most of the content is the same - news, reviews and tutorials...

I have the same problem (notice all the sites in my sig)

Anyway, I think a design-zine could be cool, but like Resuepus mentioned, you'd have to do something truly original in order to make it popular...

Maybe have a "Design Contest Gazette" where not only are there featured articles about design, tutorials and the like, but there are also critiques and suggestions on selected entries for the design contests that week, a sort of "roundtable" of the more experienced designers talking both about their own work and the work of others.

well.. it would be less like a community, and more like a weekly/monthly magazine. So while the articles would all be accessible online, we would also release a magazine in pdf format for people to download and read.

And.. if we were lucky enough to find someone willing to do this: the site could have streaming video tutorials and possible interviews (thats getting a little ahead of myself, but you can see the possibilities)

I know it'd be weekly/monthly, but we could have sort of a weekly "do's and don'ts of graphic design" with examples (permission obtained, of course) from the logo contests. Ha, just realized I said "we" as if I was already working on the magazine .

I think this a great idea.
It makes designers think in another way, especially if you make it a pdf file, because you now have to think print-way and not web-way, since pdf are meant to be printed.

I already tried to start one but couldn't get enough poeple in to actually write something. So if you need a hand, then don't be shy to drop me a line.

mbleigh, I love the idea of "design contest gazette" where we could discuss contest entries and post howto's and tutorials from more experienced designers. Industry reviews could be posted here as well. We could make it downloadable in pdf and make a lot of other cool features, but the big question remains, bigyou has pointed it out absolutely correctly, how do we make design pros write for us on a regular basis? I assume that at least in the very beginning the website will not give any profit and that's why we will not be able to pay anything to our authors...

Just an experience I got from administrating DC - it is hard even to make people donate tutorials to the community. I think writing on a regular basis will be even more of a trouble.

I would write for it

As long as you could find, say, five or six people to write regularly...I think you could pull it off.

Anyway, the front page of DC.net needs some news... what if you let your crativity poure on it?

well I wanted this to be a separate entity from DC.net - but it could always be associated with it. Maybe a DC.net penguinpedia.com production? LOL anyways you get the idea now...

I would be willing to do some design work on it:)

It's been done before (and beautifully so, I might add) here, in website format. Were you thinking of an email one, or a website?

I would be willing to do some design work on it:)

It's been done before (and beautifully so, I might add) here, in website format. Were you thinking of an email one, or a website?

that is EXACTLY what I had in mind I was thinking about a website one, but we would release either a monthly/weekly magazine in email and pdf format.

This is still a couple months away... but I will definitely contact you and everyone else who is interested when I do start it.

Excellent, I look forward to it:)

Nice idea Gonna keep track of this topic.. I'll have to take a look in my bookmarks as well really coz I think I got something similar to the idea in there already

I think http://www.evolt.org is another site similar to what you are describing. It's a great idea, and I know I enjoy and benefit a lot from other designers' opinions.

here is something you may want to look at
http://ths.nu/beast/
it's quite nice and may be an interesting format

I have seen beast magazine before - its amazing to look at. It might be a little to extravagant for what I was thinking, but the way they offer it as a pdf download is exactly along the lines of what I would like to do.

I will keep everyone informed of how this goes, and I will also be contacting a few of you when the time is right

Wow, http://ths.nu/best is very, very, very sweet looking:)