The Net is Dead

Marco van Hylckama Vlieg on web technology, design, life and everything

Commentary

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• At 10 December '05 - 09:19 Simon wrote:

  

  First of all, you should never give up. Second, I can’t help you with answering the questions you have, because I don’t know either. Lush was and is a very good template in my opinion, and some of the templates which made it higher in the rankings aren’t better than Lush I think… Sure there is that little something called ‘personal taste’, but still I think Lush deserves more credit…
  
  Maybe the problem is that it wasn’t clear what the jury was looking for? What did they want exactly? What’s a good template in their opinion…? Should it be easy to customize it, or not? Because Lush was quite easy to customize with good results, and that’s not something you can say about many of the other entries…

  
  

• At 10 December '05 - 10:09 Steve wrote:

  Lush was a very well designed theme. Some of the others were as well. I agree with a lot of people that some of the themes in the top 5 should not have been there, as to me it doesn’t look like much work was put into some of them. On the other hand Oragami was a very well thought out and designed theme. Should your theme been rated higher? I think that’s all up to personal taste. According to myself, it was much better than some of the themes that beat it out, but, sadly rating a bunch of weblog designs is a very subjective process. Had they given the contestants something to work towards, then I would understad, but they didn’t. It seems as though the judges wanted brighter colors to me.

  
  

• At 10 December '05 - 10:15 Thomas Aylott wrote:

  

  I’ve been doing UI for forever.
  I’ve been interested in design all my life.
  I’ve been doing design and development all my life.
  I’ve known a lot of designers.
  
  Most designers are idiots. They don’t think about user-interface or functionality. You don’t want to be a designer.
  
  You’re better than a run-of-the-mill designer! You care about UI. You carefully structure your design as a developer. Making sure the design is more than pretty, it’s functional and portable.
  
  You are one of the 31337 few!

  
  

• At 10 December '05 - 10:37 Jamal Abdou Karim Bengeloun wrote:

  

  Marco, I am no designer myself (but I expect to step back in the future and take a design course to see what that’s all about) but…
  
  What the fuck do you want?
  
  Do you want a pat in the back? Do you want people to tell you that you should have won really?
  
  You don’t want people telling you what you are! You have to force feed it to them! If you think you are a designer, so be it!
  
  He is not (neither is he a a developer, he learnt it all from scratch), neither is he and neither is he .
  
  You are what you want as long as you believe in you.

  
  

• At 10 December '05 - 10:43 Thomas Aylott wrote:

  

  As for this theme contest.
  
  This has been a blast. This contest has really motivated me and thrust me into the RoR / Typo scene.
  
  I’m not sure what methods the judges used. I’m not sure what point of view they were using. It seems that all of the ones that scored the highest were in the same genre.
  
  Yours is excellent but it’s not in that same genre. Mine¹ isn’t even remotely in the same ballpark ;) Leevi’s isn’t exactly the same genre, but a lot more-so than ours :D
  
  ¹ SubtleTheme — as seen on subtlegradient.com http://subtlegradient.com/

  
  

• At 10 December '05 - 10:53 Max Roeleveld wrote:

  

  Well, that’s “smaken verschillen” for you.
  
  Me, I say Lush should really have been in the top 3. I don’t know about “first place”, but it sure looks a hell of a lot more solid and thought-through than some of the themes that ended higher. But “Me” wasn’t in the jury… =]
  
  I’d say: keep going at it. Screw competitions, those are just, you know, moments. What counts is how you feel about the design, and how “the community” reacts to the design.
  
  (Of course, I’d be pissed at missing that laptop, too…) =]

  
  

• At 10 December '05 - 10:53 Weefselkweekje wrote:

  

  Marco, let me be frank. I think you’re a way better developer than you are a designer. But since you are a really really really good developer, that’s not saying much.
  
  What I think is the main difference between the entries that ended above you and Lush is that most of them have one really simple idea or feeling as a basis. “Laughing at you” for instance is all about that header graphic. It may not have the nicest text styles, but I really love the way it gives the blog a certain feeling. “Royal winter” is very soft, it’s perfect for a blog that has the content to match.
  
  Yours is a very nice theme, but imho it’s more skill than art. Lush does not really have a feeling attached to it. It’s neutral. And true art direction is all about feelings. For the average website however, and blogs especially, neutral works just fine.
  
  I’m not saying you should stop designing, in fact I hope you’ll continue, and I hope these comments will help you become even better. (Designers should learn constantly anyway.) Much like I’m learning to be more of a developer currently…

  
  

• At 10 December '05 - 11:00 Marco wrote:

  

  Thanks for the comments so far! I just want to make one thing clear. I thought I did in the article but judging from some of the reactions I feel that point didn’t come across well enough:
  First of all: I did not post this to get a pat on the back or to get anyone tell me I’m a great designer. Secondly I did not post this to get someone to tell me my work is better than the work of person x. I posted it in order to get some pointers on where I went wrong in my serious attempt to come up with an award winning weblog design. I really believed I had all bases covered. I was wrong. I fail to see why which is why I’m looking for answers. That’s all really.

  
  

• At 10 December '05 - 11:38 Kyle wrote:

  

  Marco, I think what you have to learn is that everyone is a designer.
  
  The ones who have the “title” of designer are those who can interpret their design instincts and make them a reality.
  
  If something looks “good” or “bad” is completely subjective. When the “masses” like your design — that should be enough to tell you that you hit your target. That’s all that matters with design — did you make your target audience go “wow” ?
  
  I hope to see more development with Lush, personally.

  
  

• At 10 December '05 - 11:43 Marco wrote:

  

  Ow don’t be afraid, Lush ain’t dead. Not before I port it to WordPress AND Pivot

  
  

• At 10 December '05 - 11:56 Dan wrote:

  Keep in mind the ads that win design awards are often failures for those who paid for them.
  
  Google, delicious and craigslist never won any design awards but look at where they are.

  
  

• At 10 December '05 - 13:15 Alterion wrote:

  .. everything is subjective.. and you should’t give a dam’n .. those are the first (okay maybe the 4th and 5th) rules of design in my book. you loved lush.. many others loved it.. it looked great.. that’s all that should reaaly matter.. love the blog btw.. importing the entire 9rules network into my reader waqs quite an experience..

  
  

• At 10 December '05 - 17:34 Eric Stewart wrote:

  I don’t know what else I can add except that I don’t understand why Lush didn’t place higher. I really don’t. I can’t understand why many of the higher placed results made it.
  
  In any case, I’m another person who really likes Lush. Enough, in fact, to choose it for my own blog theme (over a week before the contest end). Don’t stop what you’re doing.

  
  

• At 11 December '05 - 07:58 Tom wrote:

  

  The only reasoning I can think of that Lush didn’t place higher is that you seemed to approach it more like a website’s design than a template for a weblog – if that makes any sense.
  
  If you look at the top ten designs, they are all vey “faceless” – you could picture them adorning hundreds of blogs, just as Kubrick has done. But Lush, beautiful as it is, just looks less… clonable. That’s just my take on things.

  
  

• At 11 December '05 - 09:34 Bastiaan Terhorst wrote:

  

  I think the results are outright bizarre. I’ll say that again. Bizarre.
  
  As for your focus being wrong; I don’t think so. You and Leevi both had a similar thing going on. A very ‘standard’, yet extremely polished weblog interface that is instantly usable by the vast majority of bloggers. As a ‘standard’ blog design, yours and Leevi’s are among the best out there, imo.
  
  What the judges looked for in the designs, I am absolutely clueless. I can’t be creativity, as some of the high ranking themes are bland, boring and not original at all. It can’t be quality of execution, because some of them are really rough around the edges. Maybe they looked at if a theme would appeal to the mass of bloggers? But then why did Leevi score to high and you so low? Meh.
  
  Perhaps it’s just the fact that wading through 120 themes is not fun. Especially when you have to use the admin interface and manually switch between the themes. Even when you spend only two minutes looking at a design and switching to the next (not very much), that’s four hours already. And remember these are busy people.
  
  Anyway, I don’t want to piss anybody off, I’m happy for those that won. I just don’t see why they won. Well, some of them.
  
  Kop op gast, die juryleden zijn gewoon een stel dwazen :)

  
  

• At 11 December '05 - 13:18 Matthijs wrote:

  

  I’m realy surprised by the results. origami is very nice, but 2 to 6 I cannot understand. Didn’t they switch the order by accident?
  As to your questions: I’m afraid I can’t help you. You do have an eye for good design. As you say yourself, the thing is: we don’t know how the judges have made the decision. What were they looking for?
  
  It’s too bad there’s no write-up of how and why the judges judged the entries. That would not only be very informative but learnfull for many too. Now it’s everybodies guess, and you have to ask on your own site to your readers the how and why of the decision. that’s kind of strange isn’t it?
  
  I would not take it too seriously. Too bad you didn’t win the price. But I would not start doubting your qualities as a designer, which you obviously have. As is obvious by now a “design” contest like this is just as much about luck as talent.

  
  

• At 11 December '05 - 13:40 Christian Montoya wrote:

  

  Marco, what I’ve learned about design is: you can’t please everyone. I’m not much of a designer myself but I’ve made it into a couple galleries myself and I’ve done a few sites that people did like. So maybe I’m qualified to give you some advice.
  
  For one thing, don’t take this contest too much to heart. If I had been judging, I would have put Lush at 2nd, and if all the judges thought like me, obviously the results would have been different. This contest was all about visual appeal, and if there’s one thing that bothers me, it’s that your entry didn’t even get a review. They just put it at 8th and said you worked hard on it.
  
  Someone mentioned Lush lacks a single idea or basis, and that might be true. However, I think the winner shouldn’t be too centralized. I thought that was one of the strengths of Lush.
  
  But nevermind all that. The best advice I ever received, was this: when you design, don’t think about how it’s going to be received. Just go with your gut feeling and make it happened. You’ll never please anyone.
  
  I think in the future you’ll have successes and failures when it comes to design, and I can’t think of any advice that will change that. Just keep doing what you do.

  
  

• At 11 December '05 - 19:45 Kumar McMillan wrote:

  

  Marco, you asked for pointers. I’m not an expert on web design (I’m a programmer actually) but I’ve seen enough of the web. First, you placed 8th out of how many themes? 120 plus? That’s pretty amazing. Second, I think someone hit the nail on the head, your theme had too much personality, it stood out too much as opposed to a stock theme that needs to be more subtle to be used over and over again. Third, I think your style was a little too standard (someone else mentioned that too). I can’t say exactly what it is, but there is something in the elements you chose that I have seen a lot in web design of recent years (the lines, sharp edges, the specific type of gradient?). http://soundhack.com/ immediately comes to mind as an example of this style, and there are many others … the http://sourceforge.net/ redesign too (although they were a little late on that one!). Personally, I think the skin you have on this blog is awesome, much nicer compared to Lush. But hey, it sounds like you have a following that will disagree with me to the death. And to quote the Final Results message, “These themes will be used all over the world and in many languages.” So … everyone will soon find out what the real crowd favorite is :)

  
  

• At 11 December '05 - 22:37 Joe wrote:

  Just some that were easy to find:
  
  http://www.eric-stewart.com/blog/
  http://mcornick.org/
  http://d-jacobs.com/
  http://bouwen.roelandmoors.be/
  http://blog.kweschun.com/
  http://xbsd.1.vg/typo/
  http://www.lunenburg.org/wade/

  
  

• At 12 December '05 - 06:08 Adrian wrote:

  Hey,
  I know what you mean about the ranking and judging, it came down a bit off in my opinion too. But, no point debating or being bitter, that’s the end of it.
  
  Take comfort you were deemed better than 112 others, including me (I came one behind ;)). So, you’re roughly 76% better than the masses.
  
  Oh and the expression is “sore loser” :).
  
  Keep your head up.

  
  

• At 12 December '05 - 08:01 Leevi wrote:

  

  It is just a beginning, well although you did not win the big wow prize, through this typo contest you gain more recognition and of course unforgetfull experience. Subjectively, I could say about your design, It is well crafted, with so many icons purposely created for the contest, uh… but I irresitably need to say that I don’t really like your color combination, and its typography ( just my subjective thought anyway ). Finally all the best with your designs, if you think you you want keep doing design well do it passionly, albeit this result beat you down on your heart, you still deserve the fame and popularity. See two or three months later, how many typoers will use your theme!! ;)

  
  

• At 12 December '05 - 20:48 James wrote:

  Hmmm … comments have been turned off on the typogarden.com site. Seems the site’s owner might have taken offence to some of the questions that were being asked about the typo theme competition.
  
  topfunky closed the discussion by pointing out that the “rules” of the contest have been readily available for some time. He missed the point however that people were not asking what the “rules” were but what the “judjing criteria” were. All the page he points us to says about this is “... prizes will be awarded by a panel of judges (yet to be determined)” but no information about what the criteria for judging would be (if any).
  
  He goes on to say that the Judges were very busy people. Busy Indeed! Who has more than an hour or so to spend judging a competition such as this? I’d guess the 4 hours you estimated would be required per judge is a reasonable amount of time, allowing for 2 minutes per theme. I guess we will never know how much time they actually spent … if any.
  
  Now that discussion on the subject has been stifled however, we will all be left guessing.

  
  

• At 12 December '05 - 23:30 Miss Appropriated wrote:

  One of the Judges of the competition, Jake Tracey (http://jaketracey.com/) is from Newcastle, Australia.
  
  Isn’t it an amazing co-incidence that Leevi, winner of the competition is also from this relatively small town on the east coast of Australia.
  
  A cynical person might deduce that one of the major judging criteria was where you live and who you know …

  
  

• At 13 December '05 - 00:37 Marco wrote:

  

  Miss> That would definitely be too cynical I think. Simply because I got to know Leevi during the whole design process and besides really liking his theme I also know how extremely hard he worked on it. I know he spent at least the same insane amount of time on preparing his submission as I did.
  
  The winner is in fact the only thing I agree upon when looking at the jury results.
  
  As James indicated, comments have been closed at the contest site leaving us with a pointer to the rules page that doesn’t contain many rules. One thing that struck me as very funny is the fact that it does mention themes should work in all modern browsers. At least one theme in the top list completely breaks in Internet Explorer 6.
  
  Ah well… life goes on. There’s more important things I guess. I’m glad I got this thing off my chest and I’m happy with the comments / remarks I got on this article and the contest results from various sides. At least I don’t feel like a clueless designer anymore!

  
  

• At 13 December '05 - 01:12 Miss Appropriated wrote:

  Marco> I was not suggesting that your association with Leevi had anything to do with his success, I was suggesting that he may be associated with Jake Tracey, one of the judges, as they both come from Newcastle, Australia.
  
  Leevi’s entry was pretty damn good though. Despite my cynicism, I do believe the best design won.

  
  

• At 13 December '05 - 01:22 Marco wrote:

  

  Small misunderstanding I think! I wasn’t suggesting I had anything to do with his success either!
  
  And yes… we agree on the best design winning. I’m glad that happened!

  
  

• At 13 December '05 - 18:25 Jim Van Fleet wrote:

  

  It’s just one @$$hole’s opinion, but I voted for my favorite Typo theme with my own damn Typo blog http://blog.jimvanfleet.com/.. Wish I would have known that my comments could have helped you out!
  
  But please don’t give it up. You did great.

  
  

• At 15 December '05 - 07:20 Wade wrote:

  

  With any sort of judged contest, it’s really a crapshoot as to what will tickle a particular judge’s fancy. I personally lliked Lush the best out of all the themes on the contest site (and I think I looked at them all as I was rolling out my Typo blog), and I think that’s a common sentiment.
  
  Good work, and hopefully this leads to more work for you in the future, building upon Lush.

  
  

• At 16 December '05 - 01:36 Marco wrote:

  

  Thanks Wade!
  
  Your blog looks great with it. I’m happy to see Lush holds up so well in a ‘real world situation’ (a blog packed with posts spanning over a long period of time) such as yours. So far I’ve seen tons of sites running it which basically tells me what I wanted to know even though there wasn’t any notebook in it for me. The nicest of ‘em all is the fact that too-biased , the blog of Typo’s creator is running… Lush!

  
  

• At 29 December '05 - 21:11 Waydomatic wrote:

  

  In regard to Miss Appropriated’s comment about Leevi knowing Jake Tracy – I work with Leevi, and neither of us has met him. I’ve chatted with Jake online briefly (in regard to Jake’s StyleGala award), but the fact that we’re all from Newcastle is indeed purely coincidental. There were several judges remember, and Jake was a newcomer amongst them, so I doubt he would have enough influence to put Leevi in front. I also think it casts doubt on the integrity of the other judges, and the competition itself, to suggest that there was any collusion.
  
  Everyone from Newcastle rocks – what can I say? ;)

  
  

• At 06 February '06 - 11:02 Dewey Spencer wrote:

  

  Kinda a late comer to this as I’m just starting to use typo but I must admit that I was a little confused as well at the outcome.
  
  As soon as I got typo installed and running I went to find some themes as most folks do. After looking over every entry at the garden, Lush was one of the 4 that I grabbed to install.
  
  It lends itself to customization quite nicely IMHO and the included PSD file was well received.
  
  Thank you,
  A Lush User

  
  

• At 15 August '06 - 08:37 Lucy Maxwell wrote:

  

  So you’re disappointed. That’s a reasonable reaction to not winning. But fishing for compliments in such a brazen fashion is unseemly. Grow up a little – if everyone questioned their very foundations each time they didn’t get their way we’d have a very dysfunctional society. Instead, you write an entire, embarassing rant – a thinly-veiled attempt to get comments of consolation, praise and validation. Wow, how have you survived so long without collapsing into a nervous heap?
  
  And let’s put this into perspective – you didn’t even lose – you were in the top 10.
  
  What do you really have to complain about?

  
  

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