4 ms·

Well, I've never heard of this site before, but so long and thanks for all the fish, I guess. Looks like I missed a pretty nice website.

• gdubs 9y ago
  This was a giant mood board for designers, with built-in exclusivity. You could see what others had liked and posted, but invitations were mysterious and scarce – they were seen as a badge of honor among top designers of the mid-2000s. Funny how memory can be so unreliable – wikipedia says the site was started in 2007, yet in my mind it's been around a lot longer than that. That places it only one year before Obama ran for president – which feels like yesterday, but is also nearly a decade ago.
  • colmvp 9y ago
    The whole exclusivity element of the design industry (fashion, interactive, graphic...) has always been a source of contention with me. On the one hand, I like working as a designer on projects as I enjoy the challenges and the output. And I've had the honor of working with some exceptional development teams in producing things that people use on a day to day basis. But the justifications for gating sites like this one or Dribbble has left me with an incredible distaste for the industry because it's fairly prevalent. I recall being in class and having the elite designers scoff from their towers over the lesser skilled individuals, as if somehow there's no way anyone else could attain the skill necessary to improve their own ability. Even my ex-Creative Director who studied under some ridiculously strong designers (e.g. Paul Rand) had that mindset where you either had it or you didn't. In contrast, when I'm learning things like deep learning or math, you have incredibly smart people who put out tons of free information or books, who actively help others on forums/Quora/SO on their quest to become better. And most importantly, believe in the individual to become a better person.
    • sizzle 9y ago
      I feel that they have to protect their reputation as a lot of their talent can be emulated and their fame is tied to their accomplishments. The first person who started using hashtags goes by 'inventor of hashtags'. Applied fields have a much higher barrier to entry in my experience as a designer with a background in the applied sciences. In contrast, anyone can emulate their favorite designer and 'fake it till they make it'.
      • mintplant 9y ago
        > The first person who started using hashtags goes by 'inventor of hashtags'. I mean, is that untrue?
    • gech 9y ago
      One's a subjective skill, the other, objective
      • cookiecaper 9y ago
        Yep. A lot of the cultural luxuries programmers enjoy stem from the fact that there's a binary arbitrator of "correctness". Code will either output something that contains the required data, or it won't. Within programming, there is plenty of room for taste and finesse and snobbery at higher levels of abstraction, but the field is naturally gated for us by a hard meritocratic absolute. In most fields, it's not that way at all.
      • mtgentry 9y ago
        Great design is much less subjective than people think. A good creative director will be able to look at a portfolio and recognize quality, much like a tech lead can look at someone's code and see if it's good.
    • nobodynoes 9y ago
      It's because artists/designers etc. want to believe they are special and nobody can do what they do. It dcomes from a deep seated insecurity probably
    • mtgentry 9y ago
      Most forums decline in quality over time as new ppl join. It's why many ppl here lament the HN of several years ago. I think that was the reason for keeping it invite only. Sorry those designers were dicks to you, we're not all like that.
      • egeozcan 9y ago
        > It's why many ppl here lament the HN of several years ago I guess you can say that about any community which allows new people, and you can even keep saying it every year. I used to be (and I guess still am?) a member of a Turkish web site called "Ekşi Sözlük"[1], which used to (and maybe still does) mark your account with a generation flag which anyone could see. I remember discussions about Xth generation people being so not receptive of the community values and such... Just as in real life which happens with the birth years. I guess this behavior has a name but I don't know what to search for. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ek%C5%9Fi_S%C3%B6zl%C3%BCk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ek%C5%9Fi_S%C3%B6zl%C3%BCk
        • cooper12 9y ago
          > I guess this behavior has a name but I don't know what to search for. Eternal September?
          • egeozcan 9y ago
            Calling it that is accepting that newcomers are indeed negatively affecting the community. I was thinking more about the hostility towards the new.
    • nothis 9y ago
      So I never knew about ffffound, but looking at it and considering that it is crowd-sourced content made me baffled since it's actually... good. When you go to reddit/imgur and such, you inevitablly get the same dump of tacky, half-funny bullshit. I guess the exclusivity is really helping. Popularity rankings alone can't solve minimum quality barriers. I just wished I had found it earlier, now it's shutting down.