It’s the same in every industry. Music, Film, the Arts…

The core is ego. Many are content with their work and their inner level of success.

If I see 2Advanced get another “award”, I’m going to scream. Their website is a geek’s wet dream. Impressive? Definitely! Could I use it for more than 2 minutes without wanting to kill something small, cute and furry? No!!!

Fans are a nice to have, Clients are essential. – How many people who want a web site built read web design mags?

So generally I would say these people from WebHeads are not even close to the subject of this post. I really wonder what type of service they really did for big clients from their list.

I definitely agree that the world’s best web designers are unknown.

I think there a lot of more talented designers out there, working under the radar agency side or client side who work their absolute socks off only to have no appreciation. How many times have you heard of a (team of) web designer(s) get all the credit for a high profile campaign or website…hardly never, its always the project manager, Art Director or CEO, never the designer(s).

I think some of the most talented designers are graphic designers transitioning to the web. Take a look at the publication Computer Arts. Absolutely amazing individuals with so much skill and knowledge to share. I subscribe to this magazine and I’ve never heard of any of them every month.

The article “The Top 20 web Designers” in .Net is pretty predictable to be honest. They are all people who are “Internet famous” and its just getting their name out there as household “internet glitterati”. You can’t knock their efforts to make a name of themselves out there but how is anyone suppose to break into this elite crowd to be noticed? I think its a closed knit circle there. I have no chance of breaking into that elite.

As web designers, we never have complete freedom to design, there are always boundaries and style guides to adhere to. Its how you interpret and overcome design challenges I think makes you great. Besides its always a team that works on a design and quite rare that its one singular person.

An analogy: The famous web designers are the Gordan Ramseys of the internet world where as some of us in the community are more like Marco Pierre White. Both exceptional but one doesn’t make a song and dance about it.

I see many beautiful women walking around London all the time who are far more attractive than the so called “Top 100 most beautiful women.” Why don’t they make the Top 100 list? Because it’s simply not important in their lives and thus they aren’t on the “celebrity” radar. Anyone with half a brain knows that lack of celebrity status does not equal lack of worth.

I’m completely unknown as a web designer and this isn’t because I’m no good; it’s because I don’t have a big mouth. I’m self effacing with an introverted personality (and no, that doesn’t mean I’m shy.) I get plenty of work, mainly through referrals and it’s enjoyable and rewarding. I’m an OK web designer, I’ve worked hard to learn my trade, and I try and do good work for good clients.

But at the end of the day, it’s still just a job. It’s not a life-consuming passion and I don’t want it to be. I simply want to earn a reasonable amount of money doing something that’s enjoyable and that gives me time and money to do the things I want to do outside of work. Some “web celebrities” bang on about how they are passionate about the web and their work is their life, and that’s fine, but for me personally it’s just not such a huge passion. I enjoy what I do, but it doesn’t define who I am. I’m not in it for the money, and definitely not the fame!

People who actively look to become famous, by any means, usually have some need for attention. While I don’t wish to make this a pop-psychology response, it’s important to recognise that this is the main driver for some people. It’s not about being famous for doing something, it’s just about the fame itself. Fame is an empty objective and if that’s the only thing driving you, you’ll end up a pretty sad person with a hollow life. Becoming famous for doing the work you love, in any field, is clearly going to be far more rewarding.

It always comes back to the same thing for me: Do good work, maintain standards, deliver on your promises, continually better yourself and simply stop caring about what anyone else is doing. You’ll be far happier in the long run.

I agree that .NET magazine should list the criteria for what makes these designers the ‘best’. Now to me, it just shows that .NET is full of shit because personally there’s no such thing as the best, especially in this creative field. There’s good and there’s better but never best because best implies that there’s no other who can do a better job and that’s just plain non-sense unless they’ve surveyed the entire planet.

Design is also very subjective so what I think is crap another would think is great design. In addition to that some people look at just the visual aspect but there’s other aspects to consider before a design is good. So truth is the list is .NET’s opinion. If you think highly of it – great. If you don’t, fine.

I wouldn’t take anything from the designers because that’s them doing what they have to in order to gain recognition – something we all want. So I would congrats them, move on and hope that when and if I make the list it’s not questionable like this.

@Brian: Nice site btw, subscribed!

For me, I want web designers to know there’s a friendly, knowledgeable, web developer willing and able to help with the more technical aspects of a project if they need me :)

If I was ever to be featured in a top 20 list somewhere that other web professionals saw it, it’d be to my advantage. Perhaps that’s part of the reason these guys try to raise their profiles?

Having worked at one of the agencies you mentioned I can tell you that the designers there aren’t even in the same league as the most modestly famous freelance designer.

Your point might make more sense if you were talking about developers and the cewebrities making money selling books and conferences on HTML, CSS, and any other latest “much know” technology or draft spec.

when we say TOP, they should have a benchmark on how do they define TOP. TOP means that there are people ranking from 1st to 10th or more.

if we say FAMOUS, then it sounds more appropriate, because this does not rank them into who is better than the other, but on a list of a particular topic : they are famous and not ranked.

“The 2 most highly-over-rated things in life are: (1) Pregnancy; (2) Owning your own business.”

:-/

I feel your pain.
I don’t know the answer.
You have my sympathies.

As a two man web development team, I am busy 24/7. I don’t understand how these other design rockstars can get away with the amount of blogging, twittering and updating, they do.

If I was spending that much time on myself, I wouldn’t get any work done for my clients.

Do what you love and the money and clients will follow.

I really wish I had the time to truly leave a great comment, but I got some trash to take care. Anyway, THANK YOU! I have been wondering the same thing.

Yep, just making noise all day and night to “get there name out”

thanks

I haven’t seen the list so I will not judge those specific people, and please don’t take this as an angry/jealous comment, but I’m probably not the only one to think that some of those other twitter-famous designers that we look up to are actually not that great…

All those who make too much noise and like you said, they know and understand html5 and css3, and spending more time talking about them rather than really using it doesn’t really mean that they are top designers. You need experience to be expert and sometimes things are kind of different theoretically and practically.

In fact, top designers doesn’t have that much of time to make themselves seen on every social media sites, they have “real” work to do and it is there work that speaks for itself, they don’t need to promote themselves so desperately.

I don’t mean to say that those listed ain’t good designers, they might be, but defining who is what in a list of Top 20 Worlds(!) Web Designers is a lil too overboard.

why the mercedez benz logo appears twice in the clients page?

What you’ve written here is spot on, and dovetails beautifully with another piece I read last week about why your business shouldn’t hire rock stars.

As others have said here, it’s how you want to move forward that matters. If you want to be a well-known celebrity in the industry, the rockstar/ninja route of self-promotion/branding is the one to go down. If you just want to quietly run your own business that makes money under the radar, a giant ego isn’t necessary.

There’s nothing wrong with either approach. It’s all down to personal preference – where you want to take your business, and what you’re comfortable with.

1) Type of Work: I believe that the *type* of work that you do or speak about lends itself to becoming known. That’s why you see things like design portfolios and cool web or iPhone app sites talked about in industry design blogs, or in “best design” type lists. What you won’t see on these is a site for a local bank or an enterprise app. The reason is because the main purpose of those type of sites or apps are not design aesthetics or to market some “cool” product (like doing work for Apple or Nike would allow). There are many great designers that creating fantastic work everyday, but it’s for the type of product or company that doesn’t get anyone talking. It is still very important though.

Take for example the case of Twitter. You have the designer of that become known because Twitter itself became so huge. So by default that designer is well known and at a “rockstar” status. I am not making a call that he isn’t talented, but just making a point. If the great (unknown) designer that did your local bank site happens to do the next Twitter, you can be sure you’ll know their name.

2) Ego Factor: Jason and Mark said by talking/writing about what they love the rest of this “celeb status” sort of came with it. I think everyone has to be honest with themselves, ego has *something* to do with it (even if it’s only a small part of it). It might not be the main drive, but who doesn’t like some attention for their work? Design is by nature somewhat ego driven. You don’t see many plumbers saying, “Look at me and what I did” on a portfolio site. Ego is a factor in how social networks have taken off. You have a Facebook page all about YOU. On Twitter people follow and listen to YOU. If no one cared about the attention they wouldn’t list all the social networks you should follow them on. In addition it takes a lot of work to stand out. Spending time writing, speaking, creating community sites or blogs. If it really was just about doing good work, then why try so hard to put yourself out there?

There are many other ways to become involved in the community or do good work. You can start local organizations, teach at the local design institute, and so on. You choose to get out there online and get some of the attention. I do believe it is hard work though. Not everyone has the discipline or let alone the time to do this. Striking that work/life balance is tough.

Great post and some really good discussion. Thanks for bringing up something so many people were thinking, but not talking about.

Recently my company was nominated by .Net magazine as one of 20 design agencies of the year. And I honestly can’t tell you why we made the list. Now I love what we do and our work. I feel like our portfolio is strong now, and our clients are starting to get more and more well known. So I can see growth in our future.. and we’re working it on the social scene.. particularly since we’re gearing our work to the entertainment business.

But I look at some of the other companies on the list.. 2advanced, FI, bigspaceship and I wonder how we possibly got here. Our work is mainly small projects with low budgets and that’s hard for me to compare to the work of these other companies. And with our size we couldn’t handle the projects these other firms are taking in anyhow. Plus we do 100% flash sites.. which I know makes most of you reading this cringe (for the record they’re perfectly SEO and iPhone compatible) Our chances of being a finalist seem quite small, but I feel somewhat accomplished for making the list at all.

I find success, or potential for success, quite a mystery and it’s keeping my head spinning. We are constantly trying to keep up with ourselves.. each month we have way too much work or not nearly enough.. we never seem to have time to develop our internal systems.. can’t find time or budget to invest.. ugh.. and yet things seem to be pretty good. I’m no longer worried about getting a day job at Starbucks.

Otterball was pretty dormant for over a year but in May of last year we started doing it full time.. halfway expecting it to fail.. but we started off with three things in mind that we’ve kept along the way that I can attribute to where we are now.
1. Understand that our company is only as good as our clients.
2. Start a job by setting the client’s expectations to the worst case scenario then exceed them in the end (rather than promising up front and meeting expectations or less)
3. Understand that we are not a good fit for everyone and always be ready to walk away from a job (preferably referring them to a better solution).

When we set these goals initially it seemed like a pipe dream.. previously we’d take all sorts of jobs in order to pay the bills.. and we’d bend over backwards to make the client happy so they’d tell their friends. Somehow we managed to reverse this trend (we think by following our goals) and clients seems to feel privileged to work with us. Previous to having bigger names in our portfolio, we had big name clients approaching us much like you described with Nike. We would not allow them to walk all over us and we were ready to walk away.. and that led to more of the same jobs. We get new business through referral, portfolio visibility through clients sites, and by having a good product (we think anyhow).

I don’t know if we would be considered popular or successful.. we sure hope to be both of those one day.. (I wouldn’t mind being on some panel at SXSW, although I don’t know yet what I’d have to talk about) We also hope that or contempraries (you guys) like our design work. We do. But either way .Net Magazine has give us a shot at being “the design agency of the year.” Whatever that means I’ll take the opportunity.

In any case, if you like our work, or if you want to vote for “David” amongst the goliaths, we’re listed under #8 on http://www.thenetawards.com We could really use and would appreciate your vote.

That’s simply not true. There are always going to be people (freelancers, businesses, celebrities of all origins, high school students come to mind) that strive for popularity and the general public’s affection above ALL else. Nothing is wrong with that, but it’s not the true holy grail of success for all of us. Obviously this is the case for many web designers, but I personally wouldn’t thrive in that kind of environment. I would much rather earn money by playing in Photoshop, code xhtml/css and chill with my 30-some Twitter followers than entertain thousands of people in any medium. I’m simply not that type of person, for better or for worse, and I’m not alone.

Granted, blogging is a large part of establishing your own expertise, especially in a web-based field. Huge no-brainer, of course, and I have no plans to skip out on this step. Everyone has to start somewhere–but what is your goal? “Celebrity” web designers have worked very hard for their status, and that’s certainly something to respect very highly. They’ve taken time away from actually designing and developing to speak about both of these, and they’ve played ‘politics’ to retain their titles and social stature. Nothing is wrong with that, people like that are simply prioritizing their time and utilizing a different skills set. Obviously, that group has done that well.

You just need to ask yourself when will you feel most satisfied with your professional life. That’s the real question here, and I think we’d surprise ourselves with how different so many of our answers truly are. Will it be when you see your name on one of these lists, when the retiring business owner passes his title to you, or when you can afford to only work 6 months of the year? Not everyone aspires for the same dream, and not everyone thrives in the public spotlight. Not even close.

As individuals, freelancers and business owners, it’s extremely important to fully understand ourselves and our intentions. I realize I’ve gone slightly off topic as well, hope you don’t mind John. :) I think the web design community needs a personality test.. ha!

People are posting articles called “The web’s best designers interview” etc etc….when some of the people included in the interview have a weak portfolio…these people are only known by some in the online design community, this doesn’t make them the best designers. In fact, I think most of the world’s most talented designers are probably not known by the masses at all, or even on Twitter etc..

You can have a somewhat popular blog but that doesn’t make you a good designer at all. It makes you a good blogger.

Great post mate

I think you are dealing with a David and Goliath story here realistically the “big” studios are mostly ad agnecies, they were around well before the internet and continued their market dominance.

The whole idea of the independent web designer with the small creative studio is relatively speaking fairly new, The chance to land that first big client may not have come yet. The whole idea of the design blog is for self promotion. Although through blog promotion as you point out we are reaching each other but ultimately it might not matter to the big client.

Finally I don’t see that bigger is necessarily better. I have seen a few larger (No Nike or GM or Fortune 500) but large enough clients with big budgets move away from large agencies because the service and product are sometimes better from the small studios. With most large agencies having their history in advertising and not web means they may just not be the best choice for web products. Sometimes a specific focused small agency does the best work, because they are a web studio and not an ad agency.