Designers Who Blog: Design, Illustration, Photography, Web, Advertising, Branding …

10 Most Influential Bloggers

Last year, Home Rejuvenation held a 10 Most Influential Bloggers push.

The winners were…

First place: Design*Sponge
Second place: Apartment Therapy
Third place: MoCo Loco
Fourth place: Decor8
Fifth place: Desire To Inspire
Sixth place: Oh Joy!
Seventh place: Swiss Miss
Eighth place: NotCot
Ninth place: Sfgirlbybay
Tenth place: Bloesem

As you can see from the winners, it’s more of an interior, product design focus rather than communication design. No matter, it’s always fun to watch how these things pan out.

The cast for this year (below) has a great bunch included. There’s some noticeable no shows dotted around, so, maybe give Home Rejuvenation suggestions for 2009? Like, who to add and who to cut?

And maybe they could even separate the focus a bit? Product design, Interior design, Communication design… or something similar…

(not that I’d place even then, but, hey…)

Vote for your favs of 2008…

2Modern Design Talk
30 gms
Absolutely Beautiful Things
An Indian Summer
Another Shade Of Grey
Apartment Therapy
Beach Bungalow 8
Behind The Curtains
Better Living Through Design
Bloesem
Blue Ant Studio
Brilliant Asylum
Casapinka
Charles And Marie
Contemporist
Cool Hunting
Core 77
Cube Me
David Report
Decor8
Design Boner
Design Boom
Design East
Design Milk
Design Observer
Design*Sponge
Design Spotter
Designers’ Block UK
Designers Who Blog
Desire To Inspire
Dezain
Dezeen
Dezona
Fabulously Green
Freshome
Grijs
Happy Mundane
Hemfeber
Home Rejuvenation
Ikea Hacker
Imedagoze
Inhabitat
It’s (K)not Wood
Josh Spear
K-Fresh Designs
Karin’s Style Blog
Katiedid
Laissezfaire
Land+Living
Lena Corwin
Made By Girl
Materialicious
MocoLoco
Mod Mom
Modern Roost
Modish
Notcot
Oh Joy!
Pan Dan
Patricia Gray
Poppy Talk
Print & Pattern
Product Dose
Sensory Impact
Sfgirlbybay
Shelterrific
Style Court
Swissmiss
The Cool Hunter
The Design Files
The Peak Of Chic
The SCOOP
The Style Files
Treehugger
Trend Hunter
Trendir
Uncrate
Yanko Design
Yatzer

Who to add: David Airey and Logo Design Love, both by David. They are two of my favourite blogs this past year, bar none.

And if there’s ever a blog voting what’s it for designers with language blogs, I’d put mine forward: Women Learn Thai

(perhaps a better name would be See the Expat Women Struggle to Learn the Thai Language from the Comfort of Her Own Sofa…)

Note: As mentioned, I’ve been absent from DWB with crazy health problems. With a lot of work to get it sussed, and more than a lot of bitching, I’m coming out of it. Slowly. So please look out for regular features on fabulous bloggers.

Ok, I’ll continue to kick up a fuss… but I’ll be back for sure.

Enjoy…

Vote for Jeff Fisher

So here I am. Going on the third month of being under the weather. Going on goodness how long of my adopted country heading for another… political party in power? coup?… or… some such. Right now it’s a toss up on what happens today, so, who knows for sure what’s going to happen tomorrow. Or next week…

So, in the meantime, what’s a blogger to do?

Decisions, decisions… as whatever it is, it needs to be short and sweet and easy and… you know… easy.

Well, if you are a designer (as I am). And there’s a home-based 100 competition (as there is). And all it takes is pushing one button a day, well, who do you vote for to win?

It’s not exactly rocket science from where I’m sitting, as it’d have to be author and design advocate Jeff Fisher of Jeff Fisher LogoMotives.

Website: Jeff Fisher LogoMotives
Blog: bLog-oMotives
Book #1: The Savvy Designer’s Guide to Success
Book #2: Identity Crisis

There’s more, but let’s catch our breath and get on to what we need to do…

… which is to keep on clicking a button. Daily.

I can do that much. How about you?

Please join in by celebrating America’s most outstanding home-based businesses and the people behind them.

Vote for Jeff, or whoever else you believe has busted their butt to make good.

Because they certainly deserve a bit of recognition for their continued hard work. Yes?

Tip: When you decide who it is you want to support, temporarily set their page as your start up page on your browser of choice. Then, viola! You won’t even have to remember to remember.

Simple. Short. Easy. Yeah. I like.

Back mid-March, the First Logoponds Awards Ceremony was announced. Today David emailed to say the winners were up. Excellent!

I’ve chosen to share the top 8 winners of the awards below, but you can see the winners in total at Logoponds here.

It was quite the job to get through all the winners with a snafu of a connection. But at the same time, a load of fun. Btw - be sure to check out the list of judges as they are a handsome bunch.

WordPress Template Tags Reference Guide

Every so often I receive resources through DWBs contact page.

And for today, the WordPress Template Tags Reference Guide is it. A big it.

We created this quick reference guide to expedite our WordPress theme development, and we found it so useful that we would like to share it with you.

The content was reformatted for quick reference from the Template Tag section of the WordPress.org Codex, a relative encyclopedia to WordPress theming, and great reference for your WordPress questions.

Please enjoy. I know Jay will.

Essential Books for Industrial Designers

Now there’s someone who’s done his homework! Several months back a designer emailed me about this very same subject.

Said he was interested in being an Industrial Designer. Said he couldn’t find very much information about Industrial Designers.

Well, now he can.

Thanks DT!

I’m fond of blogging for many reasons. Meeting interesting, creative people is one of them. Interesting people like the lovely Jack Yan of Jack Yan & Associates, The Medinge Group, Lucire, and now Jack Yan on Vox.

Today, after being tardy with most addictions internet related (checking stats, chirping on twitter, checking stats), I logged in to a sweet surprise. Yes, I’ve been gifted the Arte y pico award by dear Jack. Thanks Jack!

If you don’t know about the Arte y pico award, here are the rules:

1. Pick 5 blogs that you consider deserve this award for their creativity, design, interesting material, and also for contributing to the blogging community, no matter what language.
2. Each award has to have the name of the author and also a link to his or her blog.
3. Each award winner (upon acceptance) should show the award and put the name and link to the blog that has given her or him the award.
4. Link to the Arte y pico blog, so everyone will know the origin of this award.
5. Show these rules.

Hmmm, there are so many great blogs out there … decisions … decisions … and I can only choose five … hmmm … difficult …

• Joanna Young at Confident Writing (and Powerful Web Content)
• Kyle Meyer at Typesites (and Astheria)
• David Airey at Logo Design Love (and David Airey)
• Emily Chang at Emily Chang Strategic Designer (and eHub)
• Roy Peter Clark at Poynter Online - Writing Tools

All are worthy of the Arte y pico. All are worthy of a visit and more.

Please enjoy (I know I do).

What a strange week it’s been. What with walls blowing up, and, well, walls blowing up (?)

Anyway, I thought I’d end the week on a fine note by joining David Airey with his 33 logos in 33 minutes, inspired by Jane’s fun with brands meme. [… Continue reading … Branding Before Breakfast. (a)Meme.

Hands-on Web Hosting

I have a fondness for my hosting company. They are not only affordable, they give hands on service.

And no, it’s not just the promise on the label. It’s real.

Back in the days when we were putting together Creative Latitude, Conor from Hands-on Web Hosting was right there answering questions. Right there on the phone. Once he even sorted out pressing problems while driving down the highway. How great is that? [… Continue reading … Smoking Hot Servers and Exploding Walls

Macarena, editor of maomao Publications, just got back to me with an almost complete list of the DWB banners making it into their book, Blogs: Mad About Design.

It’s great timing for a Friday night. And, as I did promise, here you go. [… Continue reading … Blogs: Mad About Design

Malene Hald

Airborne and Dreaming is a fun and sunny site. The cute design is one of the reasons I had a great time designing Malene’s banner. That, and the photos Malene sent over to choose from.

Aren’t they grand? Lucky Malene’s boyfriend Jonas Kold is handy with a camera, yes? [… Continue reading … Airborne and Dreaming of Banners