5 ms·

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

by 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
  > 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. In that case, just as a friendly note, you might like to consider whether your "How to become a Smashing Magazine Author" page really says what you mean to say. For example, it starts with: "Who can become a Smashing author? You. However, you need to have experience as a blogger or an author." and it asks explicitly for URLs to existing articles/examples. Personally, I have an interest in many subjects you cover (and do some of them for a living for various companies) and I participate in various on-line forums under my real name so I suppose you could see my writing there. However, I don't run my own design blog or publish books on the subject. I would imagine the same is true of many other people reading this discussion on HN. Your post here suggests that you would like to hear from those people if they were interested in writing for you and had relevant experience to share; your guidelines on your web site suggest otherwise.
- chime 16y ago
  > 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 Thank you for that. I think you have done a great job overall going in this direction. I loved http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/05/18/the-beauty-of-typography-writing-systems-and-calligraphy-of-the-world/ http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/05/18/the-beauty-of-typ... posted earlier this year. I understand it's impossible to make every single article aim for perfection but now that you have raised the bar for yourself and we know about it, you have no choice but to meet it every single time. The first thought in my mind when reading the current article was how the color difference between left and right slides affected my perceptions and hence completely negated the subsequent analysis. For a second I actually thought it would be funny if I made a parody article and switched the left and right slides and justified it with copy-pasted text from your own article. I love typography and I try to learn more about it any time I get. But unfortunately, despite reading the entire article, I left away feeling like I learnt nothing. It's hard to say exactly why but just compare the current article with The Beauty Of Typography and you'll see what I'm trying to say here.
dbonneville 16y ago
"Nobody learns to be a rock star developer by merely cutting and pasting code that comes up in a Google search..." That's not exactly true. In fact,that's how many developers get going - merely copying and pasting code, but then later analyzing and tweaking it, and making it part of their vocabulary. Copy first, understand later. Look at the model for classical painting atelliers: year 1: clean brushes. year 2 - 6: draw copies of the master's work. year 7: assist with minor painting duties I once did a study on the top guitar players from several genre's from jazz to fusion. Without exception, every single one of them learned to play by copying (transcribing) solos from their favorite musicians. Later, they learned theory. Thellonius Monk said "writing about music is like dancing about architecture". There is only so much you can say, even if you can say something useful. Sometimes a picture is really worth 1000 words.

by matrix 16y ago

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
> 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. In that case, just as a friendly note, you might like to consider whether your "How to become a Smashing Magazine Author" page really says what you mean to say. For example, it starts with: "Who can become a Smashing author? You. However, you need to have experience as a blogger or an author." and it asks explicitly for URLs to existing articles/examples. Personally, I have an interest in many subjects you cover (and do some of them for a living for various companies) and I participate in various on-line forums under my real name so I suppose you could see my writing there. However, I don't run my own design blog or publish books on the subject. I would imagine the same is true of many other people reading this discussion on HN. Your post here suggests that you would like to hear from those people if they were interested in writing for you and had relevant experience to share; your guidelines on your web site suggest otherwise.
chime 16y ago
> 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 Thank you for that. I think you have done a great job overall going in this direction. I loved http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/05/18/the-beauty-of-typography-writing-systems-and-calligraphy-of-the-world/ http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/05/18/the-beauty-of-typ... posted earlier this year. I understand it's impossible to make every single article aim for perfection but now that you have raised the bar for yourself and we know about it, you have no choice but to meet it every single time. The first thought in my mind when reading the current article was how the color difference between left and right slides affected my perceptions and hence completely negated the subsequent analysis. For a second I actually thought it would be funny if I made a parody article and switched the left and right slides and justified it with copy-pasted text from your own article. I love typography and I try to learn more about it any time I get. But unfortunately, despite reading the entire article, I left away feeling like I learnt nothing. It's hard to say exactly why but just compare the current article with The Beauty Of Typography and you'll see what I'm trying to say here.

dbonneville 16y ago

"Nobody learns to be a rock star developer by merely cutting and pasting code that comes up in a Google search..." That's not exactly true. In fact,that's how many developers get going - merely copying and pasting code, but then later analyzing and tweaking it, and making it part of their vocabulary. Copy first, understand later. Look at the model for classical painting atelliers: year 1: clean brushes. year 2 - 6: draw copies of the master's work. year 7: assist with minor painting duties I once did a study on the top guitar players from several genre's from jazz to fusion. Without exception, every single one of them learned to play by copying (transcribing) solos from their favorite musicians. Later, they learned theory. Thellonius Monk said "writing about music is like dancing about architecture". There is only so much you can say, even if you can say something useful. Sometimes a picture is really worth 1000 words.