Do design communities promote inbreeding?
I recently received an invite to an online community of designers, initially I was really excited (and I still think it’s great) but I’m a little turned off by some of the community’s tendencies. There is a lot of love given to the trend of the moment. These “hyper trends” promote short lived design. And loving them just because your favourite designer made them isn’t good for anybody.
There will never be a classically designed website.
I’m not against web trends in general, the nature of the web is change and progression, but when you subscribe to these “hyper trends” your website and your design skills become dated much faster.
I’ve seen similar tendancies with photographers. We have a portfolio service that provides websites for photographers. This may sound harsh but the little guys are almost excited about being spoon-fed from the industry leaders.
We all need to find our inspiration somewhere but my challenge is to look beyond the trend (and the people) of the moment. Loving something because it’s designed (or photographed) by an industry celebrity, rather then objectively judging it on it’s own merit, can and does promote bad design and will do nothing for your own creativity or artistic integrity.