127 things i hate about designer blogs

so, i’m really, really starting to get tired of the xx things you should ____ blog posts.  like, really f’ing tired.  usually they’re things like 22 ways to make twitter work for you or 18 tricks to monetize your blog or, if you’re a designer, 43 grunge textures or 29 photoshop brushes and vectors.  the last straw for me came tonight as i was reading fudgegraphics‘ latest post recommending you subscribe to fudgegraphics via rss (which i read via rss).

at the end of his explanation of rss and what it can do for you and how he implements it on his site — and i have to give him props because a lot of bloggers force you to go to the site for full content, especially when there’s art and graphics or at least extended articles — he has a link to a blog post on colorburned  for 127 rss feeds that all designers should subscribe to.

127?  really?

seriously.  i check twitter, i glance at rss, i read my email, and somewhere in the middle of that and working a part-time job working in cheese, i get some design done.  when the frack am i going to have time to read 127 feeds?  i mean, really.  and that’s the thing i have against these posts.  53 grunge themes?  how about giving me the 5 best, because i guarantee there’s 48 that suck, and there’s not enough hours in the day to check every single one of these links.  127 rss feeds that all designers should subscribe to?  and in keeping up on those 127 feeds, when exactly am i going to have time to, i don’t know, do any design work?

see, i get the thing that these lists are good for seo and people who are searching for the best whatever, but here’s the catch 22: for most of the x number of tips posts, they’re the same tips you see everywhere.  for the x best blogs to read, ditto, you get the same links. upstart blogger posted a while ago his lament for not being able to find a legitamite list of influential female bloggers.  every once in a while i see a list on tips for twitter and think it might offer something vaguely enlightening and am sorely disappointed.

that leaves the similar posts for designers.  these are tools, plugins, textures, stock photography, or graphics that can be used in our work.  and honestly, if you are a designer, there’s a need, a hole to fill for really good sources for this stuff.  especially if you want to stay on the cutting edge and have new and interesting designs.  every once in a while i see the same old price tag i’ve used or the same cracked paint that i found on stock exchange and i wonder just how many times these things have been used on other sites.  so there is a definite need, but half, if not most of the things that get on these lists are really worthless, unusable or incomplete or so highly specialized you’d use it for one client in a hundred.  so give me 5, 10 at the most.  don’t give me the 53 that answered your tweet when you posted a call on twitter.  i don’t have time to sort through all the crap to find the rare diamonds in the rough.  i have work to do and kids to feed and not enough hours in the day to spend wasting on these huge ridiculous lists.  there’s something to be said about being concise, and if you, the poster of 100+ of anything can’t break that down into smaller chunks and weed out the less useful or lower quality entries, really, what are you doing for the design community?  what’s the last rule of the rules of design?  good design is as little design as possible?  yeah, that.


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