Remember When: Design Portals Were the Standard
I’ve always been passionate about seeking inspiration. While my teachers provided a certain amount with their own bodies of work and lectures, I always felt the need to seek more. Also keep in mind, it didn’t help that I lived in less than inspiring cities like Jacksonville and Gainesville; not exactly your cultural centers of the world, and not exactly the best places to find inspiring work. So all throughout college and most of high-school in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, I turned to the web to find inspiration. That’s when I stumbled upon design portals.
Take A Step Back With Me, A Time When Media Temple Hosted Everything
Design Portals like Newstoday, K10K, Design is Kinky, Surfstation.lu, Australian in Front, and Archinect all introduced me to the wider world of design outside of textbooks and lectures. They introduced me to designers like GMunk, Eric Jordan (2 Advanced), Joshua Davis (Praystation), Mike Young (WWFT), Mike Cina (WWFT), WDDG, Jens Karlssom (Chapter 3) and Preloaded. All these designers sparked my interest and turned my casual hobby into an obsession. I was inspired by this aesthetic and used it on everything I did. I had to be like them. I had to create the same visual impact.
Now that I’ve grown up a little and stopped making random 3d space fractals and 45 degree angles, I can appreciate those sites for that initial spark. They are a part of the reason why I decided to become a designer. Granted a lot of the work in hindsight isn’t super conceptual or in the same realm of designers I look up to now, but they meant the world to me at the time and still do.
Oddly enough, some of these sites still exist even to this day. Newstoday and K10k are still going strong and I still visit them from time to time. While people scream for them to update and use feeds and other modern standards, I kind of like the nostalgia and presence these sites bring to the over-saturated 2.0 design world. They feel like they stood the test of time and they’re proud of what they are.
What design portals and sites did you frequent when you were a young designer?
Update: When I say “in the same realm”, I’m not talking about caliber or worth of designers. I’m just saying that the designers I get inspired by today are in different areas of design.
Also we’re moving up on digg if anyone wants to vote for us:
http://digg.com/design/Remember_When_Design_Portals_Were_the_Standard
November 1st, 2007 at 9:31 am
I did a lot of time on kirupa.com
November 1st, 2007 at 9:37 am
Linkdup.com was afavourite of mine. It’s still there but seems to have stagnated.
http://www.linkdup.com/
The grandaddy of them all though was a site called Hi 5 or High Five or something. That was way back in the mid to late nineties. Can’t find any trace of it now though.
November 1st, 2007 at 9:41 am
Man I remember that one. I had to scour the internets for a screenshot of H73
November 1st, 2007 at 9:53 am
http://www.threeoh.com
That was my first look into awesome designers when I was in school
November 1st, 2007 at 9:57 am
My friend Jeff and I were trying to remember who created May 1st Reboot. I forgot about Threeoh
November 1st, 2007 at 10:39 am
Eric Jordan was a god! I remember stealing a design for his portfolio site for a project freshman year… haha.
November 1st, 2007 at 1:58 pm
gmunk blow my mind and surfstation (and via them Dik, etc…) was getting me involved. We have to honour those people.
November 1st, 2007 at 2:36 pm
I spent tons of time on all the portals you mentioned. It’s like you’re writing my history. I graduated school in 1999 and after that was on those sites daily. As well as Computerlove, Design Graphik, FWA.
Good times.
November 1st, 2007 at 3:45 pm
This is totally my story too. Those portals and the work they introduced me to are largely responsible for my career path now. I still check a few of them out, but the sort of communal energy isn’t so much there anymore. It’s a little sad to see the Web 2.0 aesthetic largely filling the void.
November 1st, 2007 at 4:13 pm
Blast from the past. I used to waste my days searching these sites (not in a bad way). I also remember sites like http://www.wellvetted.com/ and Mike Young’s http://www.submethod.com.
I still go to these sites every-now-and-again, but thanks for the trip down memory lane. I am glad I was not the only one spending my days on the design portals.
November 1st, 2007 at 5:35 pm
Those were the days, my friends… I thought they’d never end…
…and they have certainly not ended. As you say “[...] they stood the test of time and they’re proud of what they are.” DiK and Newstoday are still on my list of sites that I visit regulary.
But I nearly forgot about Surfstation.lu and Gmunk. Great sites!
November 1st, 2007 at 5:39 pm
Sooooo true… I remember Surfstation, linkdup, and threeoh… thanks for the nostalgia time…
November 1st, 2007 at 5:55 pm
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November 1st, 2007 at 6:57 pm
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November 1st, 2007 at 7:06 pm
while I was studying (1999-2000) I would log on pretty much every morning with the ol’ dial up to check Praystation, in hope that Mr Davis has uploaded another Actionscript masterpiece.
November 2nd, 2007 at 3:41 am
A lot of those portals are still alive actually. Newstoday/pixelsurgeon/Computerlove are still on my daily list.
November 2nd, 2007 at 4:37 am
Oh man, this is like all those stories that you read about the music industry at the time where punk wise born. You know the one, where a little bunch of kids whent to see a Sex Pistols mythical show and everyone of them ended up forming a band. I remeber being in my first half of graphic design school in 99 when I found Surfstation and Design Is Kinky, it just blew my eyes off, I could not believe the amount of creativity that was living and breathing all over the net it all most seam a race to the moon. I would spend hour just droowling over GMUNK and DesignerGraphik, TrueIsTrue, PRATE, Volume One and all the great ones from back then.
Then like the punk movement it all just faded away. Everyone wanted to do the same shit rip offs of rip offs, it all just seem so void, so lacking the spark that originated it all…
I still visit from time to time Surfstation, but its just not the same anymore. No more updates, no more WOW’s. Everyone just grew up, have real jobs, buisiness and we have Web 2.0…
November 2nd, 2007 at 5:35 am
I still go to K10K & Newstoday everyday. The portals of portals back in the say was stereotypography
November 2nd, 2007 at 9:35 am
[i]All these designers sparked my interest and turned my casual hobby into an obsession. I was inspired by this aesthetic and used it on everything I did. I had to be like them. I had to create the same visual impact.[/i]
That is so true. I was majorly stunned when i’ve reached The Horus Project in 2000 or so.. From that point it was clear to me what my profession would be for the rest of my life. I still visit these sites regularly.
Renascentfused / Renascentrefused was one of my favourites, but it’s dead for a very long time now.
November 2nd, 2007 at 12:21 pm
stereotypography! Yes! Best site ever (well, for that month or so that I spent just hitting refresh to see what was happening across all the other sites). Then I started using bloglines and could read the feeds myself and all the fun died.
Newstoday and cpluv are definitely still holding it down though.. Good stuff abound.
November 2nd, 2007 at 2:12 pm
And for me : Newstoday and Cpluv everyday
November 2nd, 2007 at 6:40 pm
stereotypography was a daily source for sure. wellvetted and testpilotcollective were also favourites.
November 3rd, 2007 at 6:07 am
I miss those days, internet is becoming so “social” that those real small intimate (often hidden) portals are destroyed.
a shame
November 3rd, 2007 at 7:19 am
I still remember, omg, Swank Army, that was the first designers community, a granddad of Threeoh, Newstoday, SFSTN…
But now, check Design You Trust for the design inspirations.
November 3rd, 2007 at 11:53 am
i really love http://www.luminescene.com
mostly motion graphics but it’s a really nice magazine
November 3rd, 2007 at 2:47 pm
I used a lot of those sites mentioned here, but two of the mos inspiring when it came to the daily dabate was in my book: the Dreamless board (Joshua Davis) and Renascent Fusedboard (I think that was the name..). Very inspiring stuff.
November 4th, 2007 at 11:58 am
It was back in 1998 when gif was still the thing in motion graphics at the internet and somebody showed me the first flash site i had ever seen: gabocorp.com
I was SO amazed.
November 4th, 2007 at 12:45 pm
Design is Kinky, Australian INfront and K10K were favs of mine.
November 4th, 2007 at 12:57 pm
agreed, computerlove and newstoday are still working strong. as for dying portals its just that they have now become blogs(computerlove).
some new inspiration sites i now frequent:
http://serifpublishing.com/
http://ffffound.com/
http://www.notcot.org/
there are so many and there are new ones everyday!
November 4th, 2007 at 3:55 pm
i have to give props to Dutch veterans http://www.delijst.net (since 1997 or so) and Carole Guevin’s brainchild http://www.netdiver.net . Still going strong, basically outliving the designportal trend and still offering fresh inspiration on a regular base. Gotto admire the passion for our trade and sheer stamina.
Same goes for them oldies that still have some miles into them!
November 5th, 2007 at 7:31 pm
Phirebrush.com, designiskinky.net and spoono.com for allowing to find other sites easily.
November 6th, 2007 at 10:58 am
Design & trends in spanish ;)
http://www.morecoffeeplease.net
November 12th, 2007 at 12:38 am
http://www.praktica.net since 1999. Only in french but certainly one of the best with their excellent search engine for the history of the international webdesign.
November 20th, 2007 at 10:00 am
Eeeek! Newstoday has just had a design overhaul. Me no like. Need to find a new homepage!
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