3 ms·

The best advice I can give is: Don't use Smashing Magazine as a source of design education. Their articles are superficial at best and I've never seen one writt

by matrix 16y ago

The best advice I can give is: Don't use Smashing Magazine as a source of design education. Their articles are superficial at best and I've never seen one written by anyone who exhibits real expertise in the topic. Learn the basics first - color theory, composition, etc - from good art or design texts, and from learning to draw.

smashing_mag 16y ago
matrix, thank you for your comment. But I would like to provide our opinion on this. Actually, we work very hard to prvide the best content out there, and articles are checked and revised by invited experts around the world before it gets published. It's too bad that you haven't noticed any articles written by authors who exhibit real expertise in the topic. Please check the following articles published over the last 2 months: Christian Heilmann - http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/10/11/local-storage-and-how-to-use-it/ http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/10/11/local-storage-and... Bruce Lawson, Remy Sharp - http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/09/23/html5-the-facts-and-the-myths/ http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/09/23/html5-the-facts-a... Alma Hoffmann - http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/09/14/finding-alternative-sources-of-typographic-layout-in-our-surroundings/ http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/09/14/finding-alternati... Paul Boag - http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/09/06/fight-the-system-battling-bureaucracy/ http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/09/06/fight-the-system-... Rachel Andrew - http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/07/19/how-to-use-css3-media-queries-to-create-a-mobile-version-of-your-website/ http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/07/19/how-to-use-css3-m... Thomas Giannattasio - http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/11/02/the-ails-of-typographic-anti-aliasing/ http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/11/02/the-ails-of-typog... They are all experts in what they are writing about. The focus on Smashing Magazine is not design theory, but rather insights from practice, learned and shared by designers and developers out there. And yes, sometimes we do mistakes, but we always clear things up and improve the articles. Also, we always welcome feedback and constructive criticism, and we would love to hear what you think we could do to improve the quality of Smashing Magazine's article. Thank you for your time. Vitaly Friedman, editor-in-chief of Smashing Magazine
- matrix 16y ago
  It's a pleasure to have the opportunity to provide feedback. Smashing Magazine covers a wide range of topics without necessarily going into depth in any one of them. I'm sure this is a function of wanting to drive traffic from reddit and the like. Understanding and learning takes time which isn't the kind of thing that leads to quick upvotes on the big social media sites. I'm not saying this is right or wrong, merely that this leads to a certain type of article. Nobody learns to be a rock star developer by merely cutting and pasting code that comes up in a Google search. They work at it through experience, good books, and working with smart people. Design is the same - you can do the equivalent of cutting and pasting some rules, but to become a good designer there's a learning process. I suggest having content such as a series of articles on one particular aspect of design, leading the reader from fundamentals to more advanced concepts. These articles are unlikely to be quick hits on the social networks, but they create more long-term value that keeps people coming back. That aside, I think it would benefit Smashing Magazine's brand enormously if you resisted the temptation to run the "N beautiful pictures of Y" articles. No doubt they're quick hits for social media, but they come at the price of diluting the value of Smashing Magazine.
  - smashing_mag 16y ago
    Thank you for your feedback, I understand what you are saying. If you compare Smashing Magazine's article from a year ago with the recently published ones, you'll notice a big difference. We haven't been publishing "N beautiful pictures of Y" articles for almost a year now. We are trying to make SmashingMag a high quality publication for designers and developers. You won't find photography posts on Smash any longer (only maybe once every 3 months or so, over the weekend, but they are not our focus). Please do check Smashing Magazine and its recent articles. We have changed a lot, and we are aware that this is probably a long process, and we are willing to get better and become more useful and relevant for the design community. Comments such as yours help us find the right direction and stick to it. For instance, we created an experts panel where we invited experts of various fields to review articles published on Smashing Magazine before they get published. Every expert gets paid for his/her review. We would love to have you as a reviewer in our expert panel, to improve and maintain the high quality of the articles. Are you interested? Or maybe you or some other readers of Hacker News would like to write a rebuttal, explaining what's wrong in the article and what the real "proper" rules are? We would love to publish it on Smashing Magazine. We really want to help out the community. It was never about just pumping some (good, bad or average) content out there, it never was. We want to publish high quality articles, and only high quality. I like the idea of having a series of articles on one particular aspect of design, and we've had such series in the past, and they usually work well. So I will definitely keep that in mind. Thank you, matrix, I truly appreciate your time and your feedback. — Vitaly Friedman, editor-in-chief of Smashing Magazine
Silhouette 16y ago
Both Smashing Magazine and, more recently, the Smashing Network posts they link to from their own site tend to be highly variable IME. Some are quite deep, and some are like this one, with laudable goals but simply not very good. The trouble is, unless you already know the topic fairly well anyway, it's often hard to tell the difference between good advice and bad, or between subjective personal opinion/preference and conclusions based on hard empirical data. After all, as I write this, the link to this article has 67 points and is near the top of the home page. I'd like to encourage people who might post more HN links to articles on graphic design, typography, usability, etc. that have real depth. Clearly a lot of people who contribute here work in related fields, so I suspect there would be enough interest to justify highlighting good content. I just don't want another five linkbait articles parroting the differences between en- and em-dashes as if that sort of detail is what typography is really about, or another ten that start by explaining a colour wheel and then parrot trivia about what each colour "means" without giving any useful examples or practical discussion about how to use that knowledge to do something better.

by matrix 16y ago

smashing_mag 16y ago

matrix, thank you for your comment. But I would like to provide our opinion on this. Actually, we work very hard to prvide the best content out there, and articles are checked and revised by invited experts around the world before it gets published. It's too bad that you haven't noticed any articles written by authors who exhibit real expertise in the topic. Please check the following articles published over the last 2 months: Christian Heilmann - http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/10/11/local-storage-and-how-to-use-it/ http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/10/11/local-storage-and... Bruce Lawson, Remy Sharp - http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/09/23/html5-the-facts-and-the-myths/ http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/09/23/html5-the-facts-a... Alma Hoffmann - http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/09/14/finding-alternative-sources-of-typographic-layout-in-our-surroundings/ http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/09/14/finding-alternati... Paul Boag - http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/09/06/fight-the-system-battling-bureaucracy/ http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/09/06/fight-the-system-... Rachel Andrew - http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/07/19/how-to-use-css3-media-queries-to-create-a-mobile-version-of-your-website/ http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/07/19/how-to-use-css3-m... Thomas Giannattasio - http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/11/02/the-ails-of-typographic-anti-aliasing/ http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/11/02/the-ails-of-typog... They are all experts in what they are writing about. The focus on Smashing Magazine is not design theory, but rather insights from practice, learned and shared by designers and developers out there. And yes, sometimes we do mistakes, but we always clear things up and improve the articles. Also, we always welcome feedback and constructive criticism, and we would love to hear what you think we could do to improve the quality of Smashing Magazine's article. Thank you for your time. Vitaly Friedman, editor-in-chief of Smashing Magazine

matrix 16y ago
It's a pleasure to have the opportunity to provide feedback. Smashing Magazine covers a wide range of topics without necessarily going into depth in any one of them. I'm sure this is a function of wanting to drive traffic from reddit and the like. Understanding and learning takes time which isn't the kind of thing that leads to quick upvotes on the big social media sites. I'm not saying this is right or wrong, merely that this leads to a certain type of article. Nobody learns to be a rock star developer by merely cutting and pasting code that comes up in a Google search. They work at it through experience, good books, and working with smart people. Design is the same - you can do the equivalent of cutting and pasting some rules, but to become a good designer there's a learning process. I suggest having content such as a series of articles on one particular aspect of design, leading the reader from fundamentals to more advanced concepts. These articles are unlikely to be quick hits on the social networks, but they create more long-term value that keeps people coming back. That aside, I think it would benefit Smashing Magazine's brand enormously if you resisted the temptation to run the "N beautiful pictures of Y" articles. No doubt they're quick hits for social media, but they come at the price of diluting the value of Smashing Magazine.
- smashing_mag 16y ago
  Thank you for your feedback, I understand what you are saying. If you compare Smashing Magazine's article from a year ago with the recently published ones, you'll notice a big difference. We haven't been publishing "N beautiful pictures of Y" articles for almost a year now. We are trying to make SmashingMag a high quality publication for designers and developers. You won't find photography posts on Smash any longer (only maybe once every 3 months or so, over the weekend, but they are not our focus). Please do check Smashing Magazine and its recent articles. We have changed a lot, and we are aware that this is probably a long process, and we are willing to get better and become more useful and relevant for the design community. Comments such as yours help us find the right direction and stick to it. For instance, we created an experts panel where we invited experts of various fields to review articles published on Smashing Magazine before they get published. Every expert gets paid for his/her review. We would love to have you as a reviewer in our expert panel, to improve and maintain the high quality of the articles. Are you interested? Or maybe you or some other readers of Hacker News would like to write a rebuttal, explaining what's wrong in the article and what the real "proper" rules are? We would love to publish it on Smashing Magazine. We really want to help out the community. It was never about just pumping some (good, bad or average) content out there, it never was. We want to publish high quality articles, and only high quality. I like the idea of having a series of articles on one particular aspect of design, and we've had such series in the past, and they usually work well. So I will definitely keep that in mind. Thank you, matrix, I truly appreciate your time and your feedback. — Vitaly Friedman, editor-in-chief of Smashing Magazine

Silhouette 16y ago

Both Smashing Magazine and, more recently, the Smashing Network posts they link to from their own site tend to be highly variable IME. Some are quite deep, and some are like this one, with laudable goals but simply not very good. The trouble is, unless you already know the topic fairly well anyway, it's often hard to tell the difference between good advice and bad, or between subjective personal opinion/preference and conclusions based on hard empirical data. After all, as I write this, the link to this article has 67 points and is near the top of the home page. I'd like to encourage people who might post more HN links to articles on graphic design, typography, usability, etc. that have real depth. Clearly a lot of people who contribute here work in related fields, so I suspect there would be enough interest to justify highlighting good content. I just don't want another five linkbait articles parroting the differences between en- and em-dashes as if that sort of detail is what typography is really about, or another ten that start by explaining a colour wheel and then parrot trivia about what each colour "means" without giving any useful examples or practical discussion about how to use that knowledge to do something better.