I Mean No Harm
Hopefully this post will not create the same response as when Orson Wells narrated the War of the Worlds on the radio. I don’t want anyone jumping out of any windows or anything. Please, no need to worry, I didn’t really take over Trent’s blog… only this post. MUHAHAHA.
What’s Going On Here?
What you are seeing is a post written and designed by your’s truly Yaron Schoen. Why you may ask? Good question.
The story starts in a small town called Austin where the annual SXSWi takes place. 5 condensed days of sheer design geekry and an almost insane amount of conversations and debates. Trent was one of the many amazing chaps I got to know there.
One day a bunch of us decided to go out for food and drinks and basically bail on some of the panels. By the time we left the convention center, Trent and I came up with a pretty rough idea of something we wanted to create. By the time we got to the restaurant we already purchased a domain – Trent purchased it on his iPhone, and I bought the drinks. Easy.
The Idea
While in the convention center we both started ranting that us designers do not collaborate that much on experimental projects. This is something that the music world does all the time, duets or even bands come together to release one album (Them Crooked Vultures, Atoms for Peace). Why the heck are we not doing that. Collaborations of this form seem to produce amazing material that shift from the normal things these artists create. It’s refreshing both for them as creatives and for us as consumers.
With that notion in mind we did some idea ping pong and at the end came up with DesignSwap.
What The Heck Is DesignSwap?
Another good question. We aren’t even really sure. We know we want to promote collaborations between designers throughout our community. We know that this could be done by fostering new friendships and partnerships. We know that as designers we have the most fun and freedom to experiment when working on our personal projects / blogs / sites. We know that our consumers would be happy to see new and fresh ideas. So why not create a platform that promotes all that?
DesignSwap’s sole purpose is to promote collaborations between designers by saying one simple thing – I design on your site, you design on mine. We realized with that strong notion, there was no need to create unnecessary rules around this experiment. Trent and I figured that if we keep the rules open, our design peeps would utilize their swaps in far more creative ways than we could even imagine. Of-course on sites like Trent’s and mine, it is easier since we have the infrastructure to design per article. That said, we leave other swaps open to interpretation. This is what Trent and I did, what would you swap?
Feel Free To Contact Us
By all means. We want to hear from you. If you would like to participate in this experiment just fill out the form on design-swap.com We will try to answer you in a some what timely manner.
Viva La Swap!
