For those who are unaware, Dribbble is a social hub for designers (mostly web folk) to showcase small screenshots of their latest work, in order to gain feedback from the community. I’ve been using it since early June and just wanted to share my thoughts.

Now, I’d heard great things about Dribbble before i was ‘drafted’ in by a friend. It seemed to be the place where all the ‘top’ web designers hung out, you know the same one who are topping the bill at the ridiculously expensive conferences, so it naturally got a lot of attention and created a desire amongst the rest of the design community to get involved.

The site itself was the brainchild of Dan Cederholm, and rather than being somewhere exclusive and aloof it had a nice way of getting others involved whilst making sure that the quality would remain. It manages to put the responsibility for quality on the shoulders of its users. It does this by only giving a small amount of opportunities to invite others, and being very clear as to your responsibility for ensuring the work displayed remains decent.

Don’t get me wrong, people are always going to invite ‘friends’ who might not be great designers, so there is a bit of poor quality work on there, but the way the site is structured ensures you can personalise your experience by ‘following’ only the best designers. In that way, it’s very like Twitter…you can seperate the wheat from the chaff.

The most interesting aspect of the site is the community. There have always been ways of showing work off online, and the standard portfolio is still the best way to do that. However, being able to get instant feedback from friends and respected peers on small design decisions is incredibly valuable. The site only allows you to upload small screenshots (400px x 300px) so it really is only a glimpse of the work, but it’s enough for people to give opinion on a loose concept for a icon, type choice or navigation design for example. The basic values of communities also still exist, so you get more out of it the more you give into it. Commenting on work is a valuable way of being seen by others.

It’s also very useful when looking for inspiration. Each upload is ‘tagged’ so it’s very easy to search for specific items. One I have found quite useful is ‘CSS3′, which often gives good insight into the latest designs being done using the latest coding techniques. My only real gripe is that I’m starting to see a lot of similarities between people’s work. The site gives a really good reflection of the latest web design trends (the good and the bad), but there’s only so many glossy buttons and social media icons I can stomach!

It’s going to be very interesting to see how dribbble develops. They’ve recently released their API, which has seen a whole host of sites being created. A good place for keeping on top of this is Rebbbounds, which is a tumblr blog showcasing the latest dribbble mashups! One worth checking out is Scorebbboard, which using dribbble shots to create a 2 player game.

With regards to its users, i’ll be curious to see if it starts to attract a wider variety of designers, becoming a bit more like Behance perhaps. What I’m hoping for however is that it plays to its strengths, focuses on its community and remains a fun place to share ideas.

P.S. If you want to be ‘drafted’, leave a comment on this post with a link to some work. If anyone does I’ll pick out the best few and make sure you are next on my invite list!

2010/01 Michael Bierut from CreativeMornings on Vimeo.

This is a great talk from Michael Bierut from Pentagram. Interesting for anyone that works with clients. He is right about so many things…but especially like the section where he discusses never talking about educating the client. It’s a sbject that doesn’t get talked about much, so it’s definately worth taking time out to watch.

I’ve been busy over the last week taking some pics of the fuse8 Leeds office. This particular shot is of my current monitor setup! Loving the vertical widescreen for blog/twitter reading!

For a sneak peek inside the office of a digital agency, check out the rest of the pics on the fuse8 flickr page

Loving this one minute advertisement for the launch of Turkish Edition of The New York Times.

Liking the look of this film trailer for a documentary about creativity.

I have for some time used flickr, and the excellent ‘uploadr for flickr‘ firefox extension to keep store of visual inspiration that I come across online, mainly because I could never get a god damn ffffound invite! That was until I found Image Spark, a fantastic service that lets you perform a similar function, but with the added ability to tag imagery and create moodboards for clients.

Defo worth a look: http://www.imgspark.com

See the stuff that inspires me: http://www.imgspark.com/image/listing/kevcharlton/

I’m getting more and more tempted to dust off my old deck and get back into skateboarding. I went down to the launch of the new Thornes Park Skatepark in Wakefield on Sunday, and have to say it brought back some great memories, although there certainly wasn’t owt like that when I wor a lad!

That fresh in my mind, it was good to come across a collaboration between pro skater Buddy Carr and graphic designer Antonio Carusone.

Check it out!

http://www.buddycarrskateboards.com