X Somethings Y Should Have

If you follow the Drawar Twitter account then you know there was an article that was linked to yesterday and it happened to be a list. If you are new here then do some required reading because you will see that I do believe list posts serve a purpose when done correctly. Unfortunately for us, our community is mostly littered with list posts that doesn't help anybody. Of course instead of thinking for ourselves many people feel intrigued to link to them and therefore keep the life cycle alive.

This list post in particular had one glaring item that bothered me and that was why I linked to it. I'm not going to link to it in this article, but one of the 'design items' required for your blog was a sponsored sidebar. Again, if you are new to this site be sure to read my thoughts on ads. For many sites they are a necessity. Drawar has them, but I like to think the way they are presented here benefits everyone and it definitely isn't a required design element.

Our community grows because we all give each other encouragement and support each other. Snarkiness and having people put down others work is not needed. In this case though I am going to make an exception and have some fun. You are used to wonderfully insightful and sometimes educational articles here at Drawar so be warned that this is neither. With that in mind I present to you X Somethings Y Should Have. X is of course an arbirtray number that I made up after I realized I only had X items for this list. Y is the focus of X items.

1. Don't Do It Angry

I am setting myself up for some sexual joke here I'm sure, but keep in mind that whatever you do you should never do it angry. Be it sending a client an email or talking to your boss. We don't think straight when we are angry. If you are frustrated and try to design there is a good chance you won't get very far. Do whatever it takes to calm down. Once you do that then go to work and you will find your work turns out so much better.

2. It Doesn't Matter Who You Hurt

It's just a blog so who cares what you write. Who cares that you aren't going anywhere towards building a solid reputation. Who cares if 3 months from now nobody will even notice that you are still writing. Whether you are hurting someone else or yourself keep on doing what you do. Obviously the public is wrong and everyone loves a rebel so push forward and present to the world another 56 Firefox Addons that they will never use.

They don't plan on paying your bills. They definitely aren't going to link to you when all the usual outlets have turned their back on you so you understand that now is the time to take care of yourself.

3. Ask For Handouts

The design community is filled with nice people and nice people love to do nice things for strangers all the time. Seriously, they wake up and hope that some stranger emails them asking them for help without anything in return. Even better is if you can ask for something big and promise that it will benefit them in the end. Why should you have to work hard like them to get to their level when you could easily just jump on their back?

Don't be a sucker like me and grind out over 400,000 pageviews in less than four months. Do it the easy way by harassing everyone else in the community to get the traffic for you. They will thank you later for it because you know how much they love to help everyone.

4. It Doesn't Matter

This might be the most important item. It doesn't matter if you know what you are talking about just as long as you write about it. If you don't know about white space, it doesn't matter because when you talk about it people will comment, nod their head and probably link to it because they assume you know what you are talking about. Think grids are stupid and you don't know why anyone would use them? Be sure to tell the world and you will find people agreeing with you.

You shouldn't promise a client a high quality design in 4 weeks because you promised 6 other clients the same thing? It doesn't matter because they don't know what you are capable of, they just assume you are a person of your word.

Even better is that you know people like pictures. Make sure to post pictures in your article. What does this have to do with the above rule? Well, it doesn't matter what the picture is or if it even pertains to the article because people love pictures. The best part of this article is the irrelevant comic to the right.

5. Comment On Everything

You see an article? Comment on it. Don't waste your time though if the site doesn't allow you to input an url and link it back to your site. If they do, then by all means just say "FIRST!!!" or "Great article, thanks". You might be tempted to leave something more insightful, don't fall into that trap because the writer of the article probably wouldn't do the same for you on your site. It's not about what the community can do for you, it's about how quickly you can exploit the community.

Also, you will come across people that feel you should do more and they will let you know. Ignore them. You have to do whatever you can however you can and they will never understand this.

6. Logo

This point has something to do with a logo, but I'm not sure what. As #4 states though, it doesn't matter.

7. You Can Never Have Enough

Lists posts? We need. more. Ads? More. Design blogs not actually talking about design? Of course we need more.

Who are you to deprive the community of what they want? You aren't that type of person so you stick strong to your beliefs whether they make sense or not.

8. Finish Strong

Like this.