Over time, however, Dribbble transformed from what it was in those early days to what it is now: A glorified sandpit for icon designers where all the cool kids sit in one corner stroking each other's genitals while simultaneously throwing sand at everyone else.

Every week is the same:

Part 1: [insert-cool-designer-name] creates some "brand new" social media icons, 700 people tell him how awesome he is, 50 people rebound his shot with their own version of the exact same icons, and later [other-cool-designer] posts a followup icon set which receives comparatively similar treatment.

Part 2: Someone dares to do something different or have an opinion, and the Dribbble Nazis go crazy.  They all gang up on the poor unsuspecting designer and beat him to a pulp for not conforming to their self-imposed standards.

This is not a fucking "community", it's a gang.

I hereby retire from Dribbble roster. I'm bored of the drama from the Dribbble Elite, I'm bored of the copying, I'm bored of the inbreeding, I'm bored of the cliques.

If you need me, you can find me here, or on Twitter. I'll be busy, doing design work because I enjoy it and I get paid for it. Not cause I want lots of people to click the little heart button and leave me a comment.

The real design community, to me, consists of the amazing people who I've met at conferences all over the world, who I've sat in a bar and had a drink with, who I've talked to for hours on Skype about everything but design, who I've come to know and respect for their humility and incredible talent.

Not the bunch of inflated egos who run around on Dribbble patting each other on the back and expressing their design opinions to everyone else as though God himself anointed them to speak on behalf of our industry.

No related posts.

The bigger your reputation gets, the more money you make!

Not true at all. Unfortunately one of my biggest failings as an entrepreneur is that while my reputation and my personal brand have both grown exponentially, my bank balance has not. I've talked before about how The world's best web designers are unknown, I would say that the world's richest designers are equally unknown.

The more money you make the better you are at web design!

Fail. I know far too many web designers who are making a decent living by really sucking at their jobs. A roster of regularly paying clients does not mean you're good at what you do, it means you're good at selling what you do.

Web design is a saturated market, there is no money to be made anyway!

Wrong again. On that basis, every single industry in the world is a saturated market. People called the mobile phone market saturated until the iPhone came along, they called the social networking market saturated until both Foursquare and Gowalla came along. The cream will always rise to the top of any industry.

It's easy to get rich off web design!

Actually it's very hard. This is a service industry, so people are paying for your time, and there are only so many hours in each day. It's not very scalable, so starting an agency with multiple people is the only way to make more than a freelancer income, and you need to be really, really good if you want an agency to get anywhere. Do not take this lightly. If money is your ambition, then web design as a service is not the answer in the majority of cases.

Going to web design conferences will teach me important things!

No! It won't. Honestly, unless you're a beginner then the chances of learning anything concrete to justify the ticket price of a web design conference are pretty slim. Treat conferences as a social / networking opportunity, because that's what they really are and that's where the value is. Though due to the incredibly high prices of most of them, that might be a hard justification to make to yourself. There are exceptions to this, of course, WebDevConf at the end of this month is only £35 per ticket, not hundreds.

The famous web designers are all far too important to care about little old me!

I think there's only one of the "big boys" who I've come across that hasn't bothered to reply to an email, if you need help or advice with something then just ask them, don't sit there idolising them.

The famous web designers are all DOUCHEBAGS!

This statement is common amongst web designers who work hard but haven't managed to achieve a reputation. It's usually triggered by jealousy and/or resentment. We all go through it at some point, so, don't worry - it's just part of the process. If you take a step back then you'll eventually see that most of them are really friendly people, doing the best they can at a job they love. Very few of them have any sort of real ego to speak of. Every preconception which I've personally held about a "big wig" has turned out to be totally wrong when I've met them.

Some of the famous web designers are famous because of their contacts, not their abilities!

Not a misconception, this is absolutely true. Guess what though? Welcome to life, *waves*. This is true in every situation, profession, industry and market in the entire world. Accept it, and then either move on or find a way of using it to your advantage.

There is sexism in the web design industry, women are not treated fairly!

Oh would you please give-over. Women do just fine in this industry. Ever heard of Veerle Pieters? Molly Holzschlag? Cyan Ta'eed? Skellie?  The women in our industry who are really successful are just getting on with it, doing amazing work and being recognised for it. Blog posts showcasing the "top 50 female designers" only serve to foster the divide even further, why does it matter that they're female? What's next? Top 50 Jewish designers? Black designers? Arabic designers of African-American descent who live in Wyoming but were born in Tennessee? Ridiculous.

If you feel that women designers are treated unfairly then write a post titled "Top 50 Web Designers" and include both men and women, ranking them as you see fit. This eliminates the divide instead of focusing on it.

No related posts.

1999

For most people, this is where the mobile web starts. Mobile operators begin to hype WAP as the next big thing as the first handsets become available. We're all amazed that something which can fit into the palm of our hand can look up CINEMA SHOWING TIMES. Zomg, bitches, the future is here!

Personally, I enjoy rocking out with my Nokia 7110 (as seen in the Matrix) did you know that flip-down plastic bits and scroll wheels are the next big thing for mobile phones? It also has infra-fucking-red. Hell yeah.

2000

According to the WAP Forum (basically the W3C of WAP) in less than two years, all new digital handheld devices will be WAP-enabled. Business technology advisor Gartner predicts that the mobile phone will become the most widely used Internet access device in the world, with the number of installed mobile phones topping 1 billion after 2003.

The president of Ericsson (yeah, remember them?) says that "Mobile Net will soon outgrow fixed Net". So, the mobile web is almost here.

2001

With people becoming quickly dissatisfied with WAP and its painfully slow performance, GPRS emerges as the next big thing. GPRS is good because it provides a constant data-connection, a bit like DSL vs Dial-Up. MMS, 2G and 3G services begin to emerge, built upon this technology.

The BBC proclaim a 3G mobile revolution with this new technology. The mobile web is almost here.

2002

Carriers continue to battle over 3G licensing to make sure the they have a firm hold on the mobile web, in the mean time Palm (rememeber them?) start ramping up production on a mobile web browser. Because the future of the mobile web lies in PDAs and Palm are leading the charge. The mobile web is almost here, we just need some better PDAs and stuff.

2003

This is a big year, because Opera actually kickstart the mobile revolution! Who knew? What about those revolutions before? lol! They were just silly people with waps and geeprs, the heart of the mobile web lies in the browser and our new browser is available to all Nokia 7650/3650 users. POW. Eat that. "We now have truly started the era of the mobile Internet."

Can I get a what-what? Smartphones for Christmas everybody! You better get ready, cause the mobile web is almost here!

2004

Facebook is here, holy wow! Someone should make a movie about this. Elsewhere on the interwebs, the mobile internet has its best ever month and apparently this trend looks likely to continue.

CNN say "Net-ready handheld devices -- Palm Pilots, cell phones, and the like -- are growing at a faster rate than new PCs. Right now there are 182 million mobile Internet users worldwide, according to IDC. By the end of 2007, that number is expected to reach 576 million."

(hang on, didn't they say a billion by 2003 before? and now it's just half a billion by 2007?)

2005 - 2006

Snoozefest. Mobile data gets faster, handsets improve, blah blah. It's almost here. Be patient.

2007

Holy. Eff. Have you seen this? The iPhone is off-the-heezy! For the first time the internet actually looks good on a phone. Epic wow-factor, everyone is going to want one of these. Everyone in the whole world. Ever.

According to BusinessWeek, the mobile web is now taking off. Ignore all that stuff before, we were just kidding about that. It's the real deal this time, cause the iPhone is just getting up to speed - so basically, the mobile web is almost here. Watch this space.

2008

Well, as predicted: the mobile internet revolution is here. The important thing to note is that it's not quite here yet, it's here in the sense that it's just arrived but it needs to take off its scarf, sit down, have a cup of tea and watch some Hollyoaks. You know, then it'll start actually doing some shit. The mobile web is almost here, just give it a second, ok?

Now let's make some more crazy-ass 3-5 year predictions, those have never failed so far!

2009

BusinessWeek are at it again, the mobile web will overtake desktops as the most popular way of accessing the internet. I know that same claim was made by someone 10 years ago who I can't quite remember - the son of Eric or something, but seriously this time, I'm not messing about.

2010

Right, I know that if I was a boy crying wolf you probably would've kicked me in the nuts by now and killed all my sheep with your own bare hands before selling their bodies on to a tradesman of questionable moral substance - but just listen to me for a moment: the mobile web revolution has NOW arrived. Srsly.

Ireland are a bit late to the party and reckon it's all just starting up now, thanks to the iPad.

But wait - don't get ahead of yourself. Apparently, the next billion people coming online will be on mobile devices. So actually the mobile thing is pretty cool right now, but it's going to get started properly in just a minute.

I Have A Question

I have been watching bloggers, the media, web designers, people on twitter, and pretty much every speaker at every web design conference since the release of the iPhone talk about "the mobile web" and how important it is. When is it going to fucking get here? The same ridiculous predictions have been made for the last 10 years, and while we've come a long way... mobile web usage is most certainly not exceeding the desktop.

Let's Make a Few Distinctions

The people in the web design industry who hype the mobile web the most are the same people talking about "Responsive Web Design" which, for the un-educated, means "making pretty alternative stylesheets for iPhone and iPad". These are also the same people who cite developing countries as the primary reason that the mobile web is set for continued growth, exceeding that of the desktop.

At what point did an iPhone with a contract with a value of over £1,200 become a great device for developing countries?

Wired recently wrote about how the web is dead, but the internet is stronger than ever. I think that same applies to mobile.

Will mobile phone usage be replaced by mobile internet? Almost definitely. Voice calls will go to VOIP, SMS will go to email/instant messaging, MMS will go to email. These technologies are already accessible to more people than ever before, and I'm sure that trend will continue. But, replacing desktops? Being used for things which you would normally use a computer for? I don't think so.

What are the largest blocks of time that anyone spends on a computer? Sitting at a desk, doing some form of work. This isn't what the mobile web was made for, and it never will be - there is no mobile device which is "better" at a work task than a desktop device (the clue is in the name). The mobile web is a convenience, not a necessity.

On the other hand, I send pretty much no text messages any more, I rarely make any personal phone calls which aren't VOIP and I definitely don't send any multimedia messages. All that stuff has been almost completely replaced by mobile internet.

Desktop is to Mobile as Car is to Motorcycle

For the average user, owning a desktop and mobile device is a lot like owning a car and a motorcycle. The car is your main vehicle, it gets you to where you want to go quickly and easily. The car holds everything you want it to, can be used in any weather conditions, and is suitable for use for a journey of any distance. The motorcycle is smaller, more flexible in day-to-day usage, and undoubtedly sexier. On the other hand, it's limited in its capacity, it's generally most useful in specific situations (eg. a sunny day), and it's really not very comfortable to ride for long distances.

The car is the main device, the motorcycle is secondary.

If you visit Cambodia or Vietnam, you'll see motorcycles. Lots of them. In fact you'll see so many that you'll quickly realise how in this part of the world, motorcycles far outnumber cars. They're cheaper to buy, cheaper run, easier to store, and more simple to manufacture - the secondary device for the first world becomes the primary device for the developing world. Does this mean that you need to start offering dedicated motorcycle parking for your shop in London? Erm.... don't think so.

Increased mobile usage in developing countries pushes global mobile web statistics higher and higher each year, but using this data to justify a dedicated mobile website makes about as much sense as offering parking for Vietnamese motorcycles in central London. For the overwhelming majority of you, they aren't your audience and they never will be.

So now you're thinking "Ok, but mobile usage data for my country is way up! Like 110% up! Suck on that!" - The question here is what type of usage is up? Millions of new people screwing around on Facebook and Twitter on their mobile phones is meaningless, there are also millions of new people screwing around on Facebook and Twitter on their computers. Unless you're building a site which is relevant to mobile users then you shouldn't assume that just because overall mobile usage is up, it's important to your site.

In Closing

For the time being, arguments about the importance of the mobile web are mostly pointless. Like arguments over whether or not to support IE6, the only thing that really matters is your own usage data. It means nothing that "global mobile usage went up 148% last year" and it means nothing that "IE6 still retains a 22% global browser market share". Those statistics are vastly skewed by data which is of absolutely no relevance to the question of whether or not YOU should be concerned about them.

This site receives less than 1% of visits from IE6 and mobile devices put together. I couldn't care less whether the mobile revolution has arrived or not. For the time being, it doesn't affect any decisions which I need to make here.

Overall, the mobile internet revolution is far more relevant to companies who do what we've always done with mobile technology: communicate. The revolution is for social networks and telecommunications... the entire web isn't about to turn on it's head and it's about time that we stopped waiting for that to happen.

The mobile web is already here, it's been here for a while now. It just isn't exactly what we expected.

No related posts.

How it All Started

Since the end of 2009 myself and @Japh have been working away coming up with ideas for building a business on WordPress. Themes, plugins, you know, that sort of stuff. Our main ambition with this endeavour was (and still is) to be different. I mean good-different, not Kanye-West-different.

I thought it would be foolish to even consider building said business without being actively aware of what was going on with the platform, so I subscribed to some WordPress mailing lists (yes, they still have those) to stay up to date. One of these lists is for beta testers, people who run installations of the next version of WordPress prior to release and report back with any bugs. It is on this mailing list, where the story really begins.

At the beginning of 2010, whilst checking out one of the very earliest copies of WordPress 3.0, I came across a small bug. It was a small warning message that shouldn't have been there. Pouncing on the opportunity to finally contribute something back to the platform I eagerly sent off this bug to the testers mailing list and, as it turned out, to the attention of the seemingly omnipresent entity that is Andrew Nacin (one of the WordPress core developers).

Now, I don't want to write an autobiography here, so we're going to have to skip a few chapters to keep things coherent. To cut a long story short: Nacin guided me through the process to properly report a bug, have someone reproduce it, fix it, re-test, and so on until it was completely eradicated. He was extremely friendly and welcoming throughout this process (despite some truly n00by questions from yours truly) and he got me introduced to the WordPress bug tracking system, which is basically a forum where each thread is a conversation and code snippets between developers who are working on WordPress.

Any developers reading that last paragraph may have shed a few tears at the painfully oversimplified metaphor used there, but the less techy among you I'm sure will appreciate it.

Getting Involved

Once I'd been introduced to this new world I started meeting people (notably @kimparsell and @andrea_r) who were happy to chat to me about WordPress bugs and other issues well outside of the one which I originally reported. It was at this point that I came across a ticket (or thread, to continue with the forum metaphor) proposing the use of tabs on the themes screen of the WordPress admin interface. I thought the idea was good but I didn't like the way it had been designed - so I chimed in with my, in retrospect, rather convoluted opinion. Unfortunately however, I was told that the decision had been made and the tabs would not be changed.

I understood this response, but I wanted to figure out how I could contribute on issues such as this one from the start - and so I discovered and joined the WordPress UI Group.

Now if you want to know what I've done with the UI Group in detail and how designing for WordPress works, then you should definitely check out the post which I authored for Web Designer Depot a couple of weeks ago:

Designing for Over Twenty Million Users: WordPress 3.0

If, however, you can't be bothered - then here's a very short summary. The WordPress UI Group is composed of people who volunteer their design, front end development, and user experience skills to improve and develop the WordPress platform on an ongoing basis. What that consists of is a weekly meeting (over IRC text chat), and as many tasks that are decided on in these meetings as you feel like trying out.

I did a lot of these tasks.

Fast Forward

Now, just over 3 months down the line, I've gotten fairly heavily involved and I've worked on a whole host of different areas for the upcoming release of WordPress 3.0. I've met an amazing group of people who work tirelessly to keep on building and improving the platform which runs 8.5% of the entire internet, and I really do mean tirelessly. You genuinely can't imagine the amount of work that goes into a release by people who are doing it entirely for love, not money.

In the mean time I've written some big posts about my involvement in WordPress, such as the one for Web Designer Depot - and we've also interviewed Mr Andrew Nacin (the catalyst for all of this) on the ExplicitWeb Podcast to talk in detail about WordPress and the core community.

I was driving on the motorway one week when my phone beeped with the reminder to tell me WordPress UI time was in 5 minutes. Did I blow it off? Nope, I pulled over, found an IRC client for iPhone, bought it, installed it, and got into the meeting right on time. I haven't missed a single one yet. It's addictive.

Good-addictive, not heroine-addictive.

Joining The WordPress UI Team Officially

Side-note: Did you just skim-read down to this heading? If so, shame on you. Go back up to the top and start again. This isn't some cheap design blog with pretty pictures, wishy-washy content, and overpriced ads. If you didn't, I do beg your pardon and please carry on.

So here's what this entire post has been leading up to: Last week Jane Wells (the head of UX for WordPress) asked me if I would like a more extensive and official role in the WordPress UI Team.

I gleefully accepted!

You can read Jane's announcement on the subject, but in summary this means I will be taking a more active and direct role in the UI Team. It'll be a huge honour to lead the weekly UI meetings, project managing the UI aspects of the WordPress projects for Google's Summer of Code, as well as of course continuing to do a lot of hands-on work for WordPress in general.

It's been a roller coaster ride so far and it's only just begun.

Closing Notes

At the start of this article I mentioned that I originally got involved in the core WordPress community because I was taking steps to start a business based on WordPress. Doing this has totally changed my perspective on what, why, when and how to do this.

Interestingly, not a single other person from any premium WordPress themes company is actively involved in the core WordPress development community - which really blows me away.

Finally, if you're interested in getting involved in any way, get in touch. The UI Group was only formed at the start of this year, it's a very small group of people at the moment and we always welcome newcomers!

Related posts:

1. Designing WordPress: Keeping 30,000,000 Users Happy
2. WordPress UI Labs

This is a slightly delayed post on my part but I just wanted to point everyone to an article that I published on Web Designer Depot last week. As many of you already know, I've been working with Virgin Atlantic for the last few months and that culminated in a big launch last week, along with a detailed case study about working with them.

If you don't want to read the full post and just want to see the completed site, then head on over to vtravelled blog and enjoy!

What Do You Think?

I know this is a really short post but, as always, I'd really love to hear your thoughts!

Related posts:

1. The Reality of Home Working
2. My Average Working Day
3. Working The Graveyard Shift

The idea behind the layout was to create something very simple, but very detailed and adaptable. Cufon is the driving force behind most of the type itself, even the body text, which means that it looks fantastic in all browsers - even ones which don’t usually bother to anti-alias. The adaptable-ness of the theme comes from the way in which the css classes are constructed. They’re designed to work together to form different boxes of text.

For example, the class=”box small left” would create a box spanning 1 column, with a background image to support the heading tag, and float to the left. A variation would be class=”big right” - which would create a box spanning 2 columns with no background image, float to the right, and eliminate any extra margins. This means that it’s really easy to adapt and change the layout to suit your needs, a few examples of which are included!

So head on over to the Smashing Magazine post and check it out!

In Other News

I found another old domain that I had lying around so I decided to do something fun with it! Check it out over at http://thisdomainisfartoolongyouwillnevereverrememberitinamillionyears.com/

More Coming Soon!

The redesign of this site is almost finished so that'll be launching soon, along with several big posts that I've got planned! What are you up to? Drop me a line in the comments!

No related posts.

What We've Got At The Moment

At the moment we're running on a modified WooTheme. It isn't modified very much in all fairness, it just has a few tweaks here and there for things like custom post images which aren't built in by default. The problem is that we haven't got enough space. There's no real room for advertisers, or a way to segment the navigation into the 4 main categories of things which I write about, or a way to feature popular posts on the homepage.

In addition, this is more of portfolio theme with a blog, rather than a dedicated blog theme. In short it's been great while it's lasted, but we've now outgrown it and need something a bit more suitable.

What's Coming Up

Over the last couple of weeks I've been working on a brand new design for the site which is almost finished (see screenshot below). Once it's completed I'll be developing it and integrating it with the current site, then ad spots will become available through BuySellAds for around $5-$20 per month.

That's It!

Let me know what you think of the design so far, I'll have more news coming progressively over the next couple of weeks and will most likely ask some of you to test out the new site to give me some feedback.

No related posts.

The Features

It's a very simple interface, optimised for the iPhone screen resolution and the fact that you use your fingers to navigate instead of a mouse. Another major consideration was load time, as typically people will be viewing the site on a 3G (or slower) connection.

As a result the site has been stripped back to basics, the entire iPhone version of the site is actually contained within a single page and uses only 3 (very small) images. The navigation has been re-worked into big bars that you can tap with your finger, and the content is all a "bite sized" version of what's on the full site.

I shouldn't really go any further without giving credit where credit is due - this little site would not have been possible without the help of my very good friend Japh who was an absolute life saver when it came to debugging some of the more temperamental bits of JavaScript.

Go Have a Look!

If you have an iPhone or an iPod Touch then browse on over to http://www.lyricalmedia.com and you should automatically get the mobile version of the site - if you don't then you can still have a look at it here, and if you're too lazy to click that link then you can simply see a preview image below!

Enjoy, and do let me know what you think of it!

Related posts:

1. Lyrical Media V2 Launched
2. iPhone Wallpaper Release: Clinging To Colour
3. Designing User Experience: Business Edition

Billings competition results also coming in the morning (promise)

Related posts:

1. Lyrical Media V2 iPhone Edition
2. Billings Competition Winner Announced
3. Why Dry Patches Are A Good Thing
4. Using Facebook For Social Media

Again With The Chit Chat, Give Me My Stuff!

Alright! Chill! I've put together four versions for you to choose from, two "landscape mode" and two "portrait mode".

Preview

Download It!

Here they are, to set them as your iPhone wallpaper simply navigate to this page on your iPhone, tap and hold the image of your choosing and you will be given the option to save it. Once you've saved it, navigate to your photos where you'll be able to set it as your wallpaper!

Edit: I've just tested this and the quality is 100x better if you save these images onto your computer, and then stick them in the folder which syncs with your iPhone. Really really noticeable difference, saving direct from the web and setting them as wallpaper makes them look a bit jagged all round.

That's It!

Let me know what you think in the comments and post some pictures of the wallpaper on your iPhone!

Related posts:

1. Desktop Wallpaper Release: Clinging To Colour
2. Lyrical Media V2 iPhone Edition

Enough Chit Chat, Give Me My Stuff!

Ok! This wallpaper has been submitted along with a calendar version for Smashing Magazine's March calendar wallpaper post, so I've already saved it in a variety of sizes, all of which are available below!

Preview

The Download Links

Click on your screen resolution, then once the image has loaded: right-click > set image as desktop background

• WideScreen
• 1280 x 800 (Macbook size)
• 1680 x 1050
• 1920 x 1200 (iMac size)

• Square
• 1280 x 960
• 1600x 1200

• Update:
• There are now also iPhone versions available

Enjoy!

And please let me know what you think of it in the comments!

Related posts:

1. iPhone Wallpaper Release: Clinging To Colour