Let me welcome you to the first introduction ofSuperThem.es where we will  guide you through the first steps to create your first WordPress theme with zero code experience and a lot of fun! Yes, you read right! In this article we will not talking about code and ways to improve your development skills; we’ll be talking about how you can use a new Live Theme Editor (LTE from now) that SuperThem.es has build right for you.

If you are thinking that WordPress gave us some impressing feature including the Theme Customizer you will be amazed from the possibilities that LTE gives you for personalizing your site, and we are not talking only about colors and fonts, but you’ll be able to personalize even the structure and the behaviour of your theme!

Curious about all this stuff? Well, first let me introduce you the sections of this article, then you’ll be able to dig deeper inside this system and discover what you can do.

• Introduce SuperThem.es – inside this section you will be able to know what is SuperThem.es, to meet the team and why you should start to follow this project;
• Meet LTE – after reading about what is SuperThem.es you are ready to move one step further and meet LTE, the feature that will let you personalize your theme on every aspect you like;
• Add Some Content – if you are used to word with WordPress you can skip this step and jump to the next lesson; but not so fast… Probably there is some interesting stuff that is waiting for you inside.

Well now you know what we will cover in this article so, take a comfortable sit and let me introduce you SuperThem.es.

Glad to Introduce you SuperThem.es

Defining this project as a theme or an theme editor would be reductive in both cases, SuperThem.es is way much more! Because, once you subscribe, you will be able to access to the default themes that the developers, Alessando and Matteo, are developing for the community periodically once a month and, if you do not have any question, you can start immediately to design your theme but, if you do have some question, you can always contact the support team to have fast and clear answer about your problems.

Once subscribed, you do not have to wait for contacts of special codes to download the theme, the only thing you have to do is choose the theme that fits your needs and start customizing it, that’s all! And, if you realize that you choose the wrong starter theme, you can always come back and download a new one.

Before you go on, I would like to let you know that with your subscription you not only have the right to access to all themes that the developers have created for you but you’ll also be able to test the new themes that Alesandro and Matteo will release monthly building new layouts for your use.

Meet LTE

Once installed a theme into your WordPress installation all that you need to do is to personalize it! To personalize a SuperThem.es is  really simple task, once you’re logged into your installation, you only need to preview the theme by clicking on Visit Site inside your admin panel, generally you’ll find it under the name of your blog

Inside your new theme, you’ll see the LTE icon positioned at the bottom right of your browser. All you have to do is click on the icon and then it’ll appear the LTE menu showed in the above image.

Now you’re able to start customizing your theme choosing from one of the following option:

• Lunch Live Theme Editor – here is where you’ll have a lot of fun! Clicking on this button will let you lunch the editor of your theme, where you’ll be able to edit it as you like. You can set colors, structure, animation effects and a lot of other settings that we’ll discover along this Series;
• Manage Preset – clicking on this menu element, instead, will let you choose a preset, a starter point, for your theme;
• Get more Preset – since you have to install a preset to use it inside your theme, with this option, you can enter into the showcase of preset and chose from a wide variety created by the SuperThe.es team and from the community;
• Advance Mode Editor – have you alredy developed some website? are you confident with CSS? Well, you will love this editor! Inside it you can add your own CSS code to add your personal touch at the theme; stuff like animation, transition, box shadows, trasformation… You name it, you can add it!

What is a Preset

If you think that I wasn’t enough clear about the Preset concept, this is the right section for you; but, anyway, I advice to read this section even to whom thinks already catch this part.

In simple words, a preset is the way that you can save the setting of your theme but it also goes beyond this concept. Let’s say, for example, that you have created your perfect design, you save it and since that moment your visitor will see it.

Everything goes perfect but, after a while, you find some new effects that you would like to apply to your theme. Normally, we will duplicate the template folder and we will install a plugin like Theme Test Drive, so you will be the only one to see and test the customizations.

But this kind of stuff will force you to lose some time. You’ll have to open your FTP client, duplicate the theme folder, look for the plugin, install it…. Instead, inside a SuperThem.es theme (sorry for the word joke ), you will be able to save you current theme, as a preset, and then start customizing it adding the new effects and you are done.

No FTP connections, no new plugins, no configurations; once you are happy with your new design all that you have to do is click “Save Edits” and the new effects will be applied to your theme. Something went wrong? No problem! You can always open Manage Preset and choose the preset that you have saved.

The image above show you how simple it is to name your preset and save it inside the available preset in your theme, just click on the green highlighted button and you are safe.

Add Some Content

Since you are a WordPress user that knows how to install themes, I am quite sure you know already how to add a new Post or Page, right?

Using these themes will not change your workflow; even if the team has developed a Live Content Editor, that will let you add content into your theme without leaving the site, you can always enter in the admin panel of WordPress and add your content from there!

Conclusion

In this lesson you meet SuperThem.es and it’s LTE tool that will let you start customize you theme. If you are curious about the project and you whould like to test it’s feature you can follow this link and start to play with our themes. But if you want to learn more, I am glad to let you know that we’ll going to add even more documentation as soon as our new theme will be released.

Beside that, you will also learn how get into the community where you can contribute inserting your comment, preset, request or idea!

Some really good news in this pack:

• Global Tablet Support fix
• Global Mobile Support refined
• Increased SLIDERS stability fix
• Cross-category lazyload fix
• E2-Visions page setup fix
• E2-Clustered overlayed post fix

Hi ThemeMaker,
at SuperThemes we’re really excited to announce you that all our themes can be supercharged with the great features that JetPack provides.

What?!? Don’t you know Jetpack? Jetpack is a really powerful plugin released from WordPress.com that will empower your site with a lot of different features, some of the most appealing to us:

• Photon - an amazing CDN for cleverly serving all your images, more on this later;
• Comments - a new AJAXed way to collect the comments on your blog, allowing your users  to login into with all  major Social Network accounts;
• Publicize and Sharing - now you can share directly from your WordPress site all your posts and pages in a better way;
• Contact Form - besides our SuperThemes simple Contact Form, free with every Theme purchase, now you can build a custom form, adding fields of your choice with an easy interface;
• Stats - know everything from your traffic with this simple tool.

We have not finished to tell you how many other features are available for you with    a SuperTheme in conjunction with the Jetpack plugin. The only requirement is that you need  to have a WordPress.com account, it’s free and with it you’ll have access to all this cool stuff in two minutes.

Now that you know all  you need to get started it’s time to dive in and discover how to use them.

Photon

Are you a photographer? Do you like to show your readers lots of high resolution images? Let’s be honest, you do not want to pay hundreds of bucks each month in hosting, do you? Bandwidth is not always cheap. Speed is another issue: cheap servers deliver  slow sites.

From today you’re able to use some of the best servers on the Internet to deliver your images for free. All you need is the Jetpack plugin – just activate your Photon: your images will load noticeably faster!

Comments

You love to hear from readers their opinions about your work but you always struggled with a basic comments system, and wondered how to enhance it to more engage your readers . With the Jetpack comments feature your user will be able to post a comment logging in directly with their Facebook, Twitter and WordPress.com accounts – maybe the WordPress.com team will  add even more way to log in the near future. Super useful for simplifying your site’s commenting experience!

Publicize and Sharing

If you want to get noticed you have to spread your job! Another feature that Jetpack brings to you is the ability to share your content as soon as get published. All you need to do is to activate this feature and configure your social accounts from this simple screen:

So now, each time you publish a new post or image, all your friends will notice it; but what about the reader that will like to share your job with the world? With sharing from Jetpack you can give to your readers the ability to share your content directly from your site. You’ll only need one time setup and you’ll be abre to show this sexy button on each post.

Contact Form

Until today, if you want to add a contact form in your SuperTheme, you could only rely on our simple form but from today if you need to build a more complex form you can add a custom contact form directly from your WordPress admin panel. All that you have to do is push the new button in your post editor and you’ll have access to this nice, customizable, form editor.

As you can see is a really simple process but if you need any help you can contact us and we’ll be happy show you how to use this powerful feature.

WordPress.com Stats

You have build your SuperTheme but you don’t know how much traffic your site is earning over time. Another interesting feature that you’ll have with this  plugin is the possibility to have an in depth look at how much traffic your site’s get, from where, the search engine queries that your visitors used to find your site on the web and a lot of cool stats that you can use right away.

Subscriptions and Newsletter

Let’s talk about how you can get the attention of your visitors and notify him, or her for that matter, on each of your updates: you will be able to set up a real newletter for your blog. Did I forget to mention that this powerful feature is also free?

So, once you activate the feature, you will be able to create two different ways to get a subscriber. The first one regards comments – your reader can subscribe to your newsletter directly  under the message section as showed in the image below.

But if you want to move a step forward you can activate the Extra Sidebar Widget and you can instantly add a newsletter subscription form straight into your sidebar.

Conclusion

There are other features that we would like to talk about, some of them are:

• Spelling and Grammar – are you afraid to make some grammar mistakes? Activate this feature and WordPress will let you discover your errors, very important to set yourself as an authority in your field;
• Notification - this feature is helpful because will let you manage all your social interactions with your readers from your admin bar anywhere on your site;
• URL Shortener - if you are using Twitter you can’t miss this one! Activating this feature you are able to share your link in a short format saving important characters to build your message;
• Math - if you use your blog to share math expressions or any related mathematical stuff, you can use a simple shortcode to create beautiful expressions, using the super-powerful standard LaTeX language

All this features are fully compatible with your SuperTheme and you can start using it from now, so get ready and update your site, your readers deserve it!

But there are some of these feature that will not work with your theme and, in most cases, it’s because we already implemented them in our Themes and in our opinion work much better. The feature that we advice you to not use with a SuperTheme are:

• Custom CSS - you altready have the LTE Advanced Mode so why bother – but it still can be handy for some developers.
• Mobile Theme - all the SuperThemes are already mobile-ready and activating this feature will break your design, keep calm and work with us;
• Infinite Scroll - again, your SuperTheme is already able to do the infinite scroll trickery so you can save time and relax because it’s already working out of the box;
• Carousel - ok, WordPress added a carousel plugin to show your pictures, but  didn’t we give you this possibility months ago? A fast lightbox carousel is waiting for you inside you theme;
• Gravatar Hover - this is the only feature that we are sad to not support at the moment, but we are working hard to let you use it in the feature.

You reach the end of the post, congrats from the SuperTeam! In this post we show you some of the new and interesting features of Jetpack but we are planning to release soon some other article that will walk you through the simple steps that you’ll need to do in order to get some of this features working on your site. What do you think of this idea? Would you like to know more about WordPress from us?

Show your appreciation in the comment area or share this post with your friends and our newly sexy social button and we’ll shout from our window THANK YOU hoping that you can listen us!

- One of the major Epitaph features is the ability to post both Ajax loadable content and static front-page content simply using the content or the excerpt… Ok yes this sounds pretty much like the standard use of WP’s excerpts, well not exactly: empowering this dynamic with Ajax takes expanded post loading event live on your frontpage without loosing the context of your reading.

- Epitaph uses latest E2 technology, including a very useful infinite loading dynamic to render images only when they’re in user viewport, this means that no extra loading is needed on first page landing. We encourage publishers to set higher displayed posts number from your Dashboard > Reading Settings since contents are now loaded only when users needs to have them displayed.

- ICONS! Epitaph is our first theme taking advantage of icons, and they’re color-editable with LTE in a breeze! We used the fantastic Entypo icons set to provide a smooth and subtle touch of class to Epitaph’s interface.

- Easy content management block alignments: E2-Epitaph takes E2′s COL shortcodes to a higher level, with those easy and immediate shortcodes you can easily manage your content blocks alignments without messing with CSS and WordPress alignments.

Plus Epitaph, is powered by all E2 standard features such as: automatic Litghboxes, image/content sliders, responsiveness, LTE ready, Presets ready and much more.

Don’t hesitate and try Epitaph now on: E2-Epitaph Demo and think of what you can with it with LTE.

‘Alt Land’ homepage

Few months ago, superthemes crew were fashinated by an ultra cool project coming from our Community: Jérôme Montagne’s AltLand project.

Jerome is a French interaction designer that recently got interest in photography, mostly about analog operas, in large and medium format. His amazing work can be seen at  photo.tumultes.net

“I love trying to capture the way light influences everything” Jérôme told us. He refers to his work as influenced by the works of photographers like Shoji Ueda, Lewis Baltz, Hiroshi Watanabe and Jean-Luc Mylayne.

‘Jérôme Montagne’ by Benoit Courti (http://benoitcourti.net)

More than everything we were interested about the AltLand project. When prompted with the request to explain the reader what’s inside AltLand project, Jérôme tells us that:

A Collaborative Project

“Alt Land is an high quality black and white collaborative photography project where photographers can share their personal vision of landscapes.
Everything is collaborative and based on a Flickr group (http://www.flickr.com/groups/alt-land/) and selected photography are showcasing on the site.
Flickr is good and easy way to share different contribution. Participants see other’s contributions and it ends up in interesting interactions. Flickr is also a good way to discover the work of notable photographers and to be surprised by unexpected groups.”

The theme behind Alt Land here is black and white landscape photography with several photographers sharing interpretations. Despite the ‘Alt’ in ‘Alt Land’ comes from ‘Altered‘ Jérôme prefers the word ‘Alternate‘ as he hopes this will give a more abstract dimension.

‘Untitled’ by Chris Friel

Collaboration is a key force behind this and other similar collaborative photography projects we are seeing now on the web. Exploring the space of possible images, improve work by sharing with other photographers, define common goal, vision, process and work on the synergy that happens: this is the key of the experience behind AltLand project according to Jérôme.

Optimizing a WordPress theme for photography

When prompted about the choice behind a minimalist wordpress grid theme Jérôme told us:

“Grid layouts for portfolios have become very popular (eg Pinterest), they are also used more and more to support magazines. The grid enabled structure gives you a logical guidance in building the site. Creating a grid system, like photography, is an art that requires practice.”

No doubt Jérôme is right when he says that “grid layout designers as Andreas Pihlström (http://suprb.com), David DeSandro (http://desandro.com, whose interview you can check on our blog here) or Folkert Gorter (http://superfamous.com) have changed the rules of webdesign.”

As always with our community fans, we’ve been asking Jérôme about the advantages of using Superthemes to build  the best photography wordpress theme. This especially because he was among the first out of our community to build a site with Evolutive 2.7 and he noticed that the latest Evolutive releases increased dramatically it’s peformance (look at the history tab here).

‘The people on the slope’ by Kostantine Karaiskos

“Creating a faster website is an important part and optimization is hard. I noticed with interest that the 2.7 increase site speed and page load times.  I’m sure than the next release will be better, stronger, faster.

Superthemes is good for portfolios websites because it enables stability and structure in a web layout. The live theme editor tool gives possibilities to prototype the portfolio, focusing on behaviors and interactions. And ajax is a great and hard-to-find feature.

Last but not least, I had a good feeling with the support and really think that guys work hard to make it right.”

Your search is ended: Evolutive is the best theme for Photography Portfolio

Sometimes Photographers and projects strive to find out the best wordpress themes for photography: the quest could have ended. As Projects like AltLand – with its own twist of minimal approach to displaying decontextualized and ricontextualized pictures – show the choice of Evolutive 2.7 and Superthemes will lead to a fully controlled, full standard and best of breed solution for your needs.

David DeSandro

[SuperThemes]: You’re a successful folk, with diverse interests and a bunch of different experiences: all is permeated by a urgency to create, “make things”. What are your suggestions to young creatives these days?? What is being creative? How do you succeed to keep your creativity alive in time?

[David DeSandro]: I consider “creativity” to be the literal definition — to create and to make things. This does not include coming up with new ideas, or expressing yourself outwardly — just making things. Personally, I’ve learned that if I’m not making things, then I’m not happy. It’s not just something a talent or affinity. I have to be creative. My livelihood depends on it! When I’m not making things, I get cranky, and no one likes that.

In our world, we have so many other inputs coming in, capitivating our attention. It’s easy to forget that we can be producers of content, instead of just consumers.

If you are an inspiring new creative, I encourage you to consider what makes you happy. Is it making things, or sharing work, or gaining the attention and respect of your peers? Identifying this core motivator helps put everything else into perspective.

Amazing effects on David’s Website

[Superthemes]: And what is the role of becoming a first hand creator, maker and deal with all the process of making a product or idea real?

[David DeSandro]: It’s funny. Most of the things I make aren’t that great. If you poke around on the web, you come to learn that the threshold for quality is actually pretty low — my work included especially. This insight can be encouraging for creators. You can assume an attitude of “Hey, why not?”

Most of the time, when I’m starting a project, it will be the first time for me working with a certain resource. I enjoy shipping stuff that is “good enough” because then I can move on and work on something else.

I advocate a “quantity over quality” philosophy. Make stuff that just about works, and make a lot of it.

[Superthemes]: You experimented with creating open source / freely available software and also you experimented with licensing and pricing for commercial use (think about isotope), reasonable payments, etc… There’s a huge amount of freely available work that makes up a “common good” available for every designer to adopt and people often deal with the doubts: shall I make it commercial or maybe leave it free and monetize visibility?

I know there’s an amazing “presentation” that all readers shall check but, is there any opinion you wan to share about how to make this work?

[David DeSandro]: The openness of the Web is one of its core pillars. Being able to build upon the work of others, and contribute to the greater good has generated an incredible, vibrant environment for development on which the Web thrives.

But there is a another side to open-source development. Once a resource reaches a certain level of popularity, it attains a critical mass. At that point, it’s untenable for the original author to support it. In my case, I was tired of responding to email after email regarding Masonry. I saw commercializing Isotope as a possible solution.

Charging money for honest work is a legitimate economic exchange, yet it goes against open-source philosophy.

My experience with Isotope has been a tremendous success. My customers are happy to pay for a product they love, and I’m happy to work on a product that rewards me. I hope others try out this model, because too many creators go unrewarded for their valuable efforts.

[Superthemes]: You’re new to work at Twitter: shall we interpret this like there are news coming in Twitter design?

[David DeSandro]: I am absolutely thrilled to be working as a designer for Twitter. Twitter has a long history of great and innovative design and I’m excited to contribute to that history in what ever way I can. You can interpret my recent employment like this: Twitter hires great designers, but sometimes get lazy and hire chumps like me

[Superthemes]: Regarding visuals: the grid layout that you actually contributed to *invent* has taken much more visibility since the early days you released Isotope and Masonry; Pinterest finally declared this a visual blueprint, a first class citizen in content focused websites.
What is the next big thing in this context? What interaction design frontiers could we expect to cross thanks to the latest technology advancements? Will the browser concept itself change anytime soon for something radically new?

[David DeSandro]: Right now there are two forces pulling at opposite ends of interaction design. On one end you have the mobile revolution. There are more cell phones out there than there are people. It’s exciting to think that we can reach people in remote developing countries through their phones. As designers, we have a responsibility to cater towards them. Consequently, this means that designs are going to need to be able to scale down to lightweight and simplified forms.

On the other end, there is the constantly-evolving world of first-class web browsing. Web designers are lucky to work in an environment where the browser vendors are pushing hard to implement new features and ship the most capable browser out there. So we now have WebGL, CSS 3D transforms, CSS filters, animations, transitions, and so many other features that push the limits of web design.

For the past couple years, I feel that the pendulum of web design has swung further into the simplified, mobile-first side. This was a good thing as it re-aligned our perspective. But now, the pendulum is primed to swing in the other direction. I would love to see wildly innovative and expressive web experiences that challenge long-standing paradigms of interaction design.

As to what that looks likes, I have no idea. But I imagine most everybody is tired of seeing Masonry layouts, and fancy-scrolling sites. Now is a great time to get weird and make something new.

[Superthemes]: Do you like Superthemes product?

[David DeSandro]: Wow, this is a fantastic product. I’m all for any resource that makes it easy for people to express themselves. Too often I see web resources that are targeted just to web developers. It’s great to see a product that can have a wider audience. And the implementation of my resources is a nice touch.

Photo Credits: CC-BY-NC by Joel Beukelman

Easy upgrade – standard users

If you didn’t touch the theme core files, as 90% of the users, you can safely upgrade – LTE personalizations, theme presets and settings will not be affected.

Before starting, please take a minute to backup your theme. It should not be necessary, but it is always a good idea to backup.

Then, go to the versioning board, and download the latest version of the theme.

Now just replace the theme folder, inside the

/wp-content/themes

folder using your FTP – that’s it. Make sure you don’t get any error and that the transfer finishes successfully.

Manual update / hotfix for geeks who customized the core files

If you have modified the PHP core files of the theme, and you don’t want to lose your work, you should at least apply this hotfix, or some theme functionalities may be broken due to a jQuery update.

Open the functions.php file in your theme folder, and replace:

http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1/jquery.min.js

with:

http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.7.0/jquery.min.js

That’s it.

We had the change to meet with Whitney at the Frontiers of Interaction conference in 2011 and listen to her talk. It was greatly inspiring, and convinced me even more of the power of confidence and of the necessity to speak out and express yourself every day. That’s exactly the very same motivation the team here created superthemes for: promoting your work with an elegant portfolio wordpress theme that let’s you focus on the content, on speaking out what you’ve inside.

Evangelizing Yourself from Whitney Hess

Whitney is a user experience consultant in New York City, running is own independent consulting business, working with a wide array of different companies, especially startups.

Whitney especially helps these small, getting started businesses, to figure out who their target audiences are, what those people need and what problems they are facing; to ensure that these companies don’t waste time solving their own problems and instead are creating something that will truly improve the life or the work of their customers.

Her work is much about techniques to better empathize with customers’ needs and to prioritize the product features that will have the highest impact for their business and for their customers.

Read this amazing interview, and find some time to participate to our first community survey.

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[superthemes] Ciao Whitney! We loved a quote on you blog that says: “My work isn’t done until every business puts their customer to center”.

A point that is worth to raise though, is that the market now is really melting with society: we have for example crowdfunding platforms and creation is becoming something more cooperative. What happens when the customers are not just waiting there for you to solve their problem, but they actually cooperate to create something to solve their problem by themselves, or at least they conspirate in a direct way with designers and creators?

What are the changes that you are seeing in this process of customer-driven development?

Whitney at the Frontiers of Interaction Conference in 2011

[Whitney Hess] Well, I think you touched on something interesting: it seems like there is a movement towards a much more cooperative customer base than we’ve seen in recent years. I think the way that industry was developing until maybe 5-10 years ago was that essentially what the company made, customers bought. And it was very unidirectional conversation. There was very little input back from the customer to the business. And as businesses grew and as corporate America developed into something where big was considered to be good and bigger was better, the staff of these companies became all the more disconnected from the people that they were trying to serve. And it’s something you see all the time.

When a company is just starting out, they may have been located in a store front. I think of it as a restaurant, for instance. The people who come in everyday help to shape what that restaurant becomes, because the owner stands inside the restaurant, greets everyone who comes, gets to know his customers and changes the menu, and the atmosphere based on what his customers want and need, and the feedback that they express to him. And then, once that restaurant becomes successful, then they start to create a second location. And when there is a second location already, the owner is not going to be capable of being as involved with the customer experience because he can’t be in two places at once. He can only be in each location some of the time.

Then, if there’s a third location, a fourth location, a fifth location, not only can he not be in multiple places at the same time, but in order to manage that growth, he has to hire levels of management underneath him and slowly but surely he becomes over more separated from the people that he is trying to serve. Eventually, he sits in a corner office in a high-rise office building somewhere that isn’t even in the same city as the restaurant, and he is so busy running the business from a financial perspective, that the service that they provide no longer becomes a part of his daily concern. He may not even leave his office and walk into a restaurant anymore. Chances are that as the business has grown, the quality of the service has diminished and it has become a restaurant that he wouldn’t even eat at with his own family.

That is, I think, an analogy for what has happened with a lot of big corporations in multiple industries. And I feel that we are finally starting to move away from that because we realize that we as consumers have become so disengaged with the businesses that are creating the thing that we spend time doing, that we purchase, that we allow to enter to our worlds, and we realize that it isn’t fulfilling our needs anymore: it’s feeling too disconnected, too alienating.  Instead, I feel that the pendulum is swinging in the opposite direction now, where we are getting back to wanting to have a sense of local community; wanting to support our local business; wanting to eat food that was grown and made locally; wanting to engage with local proprietors.

I’m finding that the same is true with the online community. That we want to support people who want to support us, and we want to be tightly engaged, and we’re starting to recognize that if we want high quality service, we need to be highly engaged in the process by which that service is designed for us. And so in some cases, that means people are becoming inventors again. They’re starting to build their own products, and build their own businesses, to fulfill upon the needs, their own needs that they’re realizing, that other bigger businesses aren’t able to fulfill upon, and that they’re not able to engage with in order to help them better meet their needs. And so we become this community of creators because we haven’t had the chance to really improve the experiences that surround us every day.

I’m starting to see that, even for those of us who aren’t inclined to create things for ourselves,  are becoming much more open and much more engaged. When it comes to being a part of the design process, where they have an understanding of why it is you want to reach out to them, why do you want to talk to them about how to make the product better for them, they  participate.

They’re willing to give their time to tell you how the product isn’t meeting their needs or to tell you about their life or the way in which this product is, where it lives in their life, because they understand, and they’re understanding more and more. I think we’re really starting to see a much higher engagement between consumers and business. And I think it’s a phenomenal thing. And our larger community as a whole is going to prosper as a result.

[superthemes] Since these means of creation are getting much more democratic, and much more cooperatively owned is very common to see entrepreneurial designer these days.
Designers have the vision to, let’s say, coordinate communities, and these overall research for meaning, for more meaningful products and services. So what’s the role right now in this new landscape for a designer? 

[Whitney Hess] So, I think that there is a key change that’s happening. And it is moving from a world in which businesses are competitive with other businesses to a world where businesses are cooperative with one another. And I think that as a result designers have to recognize that their mission is no longer to be the best skilled. They don’t have to be the most excellent designer, objectively speaking, but rather being the best at integrating their product into the larger ecosystem of products and services that exist in that space.

And it’s recognizing the specific need that isn’t being fulfilled by the so called competitors and optimizing the product to integrate well with other partner products. Instead of everything being a turf war and saying, “We have to own this whole space. We have to be the market leader.” Instead to say, “How can what we create best fit into the landscape of products and services that our customers are already using and that is okay if they keep using?”

Let’s take Instagram. Instagram did something that many, many other apps were already doing. This was not a novel idea to be able to take a photo, apply some filters to it so it looks like you’re a phenomenal photographer and share that photo with your friends. Now, of the mistake that most of those other services made was that they were trying to be the destination for the sharing of those photos, so that they could contain and own the community of photo sharers.

What Instagram did was it said, “We are a tool. We are a tool for you to use and we want you to be the tool that you use in the moment that you see something interesting. But we don’t expect that we will be the ultimate destination for all things interesting. We recognize that you already are interacting with the community of your peers in Facebook and in Twitter. And so, we are going to make it dead simple for you to share these photos in the places that you’re already playing. You can take our tool into your sandbox.”They made it about being an add-on, about being collaborative, not about trying to steal away market share. And what they did as a result was create a tool that became a better photo sharing tool than Facebook’s own, making it a very obvious acquisition for Facebook.

Being a designer today means having a very holistic view of what that ecosystem is, what sandbox your customers are playing in and which sandboxes you can do better. It means being much more strategic than it does implementing best practices and knowing where to push pencils around, so that you can make the most objectively beautiful piece of art. It’s no longer about just being excellent in that way and just being skillful and a craftsman. It has to do with really being an anthropologist as well.

[superthemes] As a last point, I would like to ask you to explain our community why they should be curious for what is outside and engage with the outside in research for meaning, communities and interactions.

[Whitney Hess] Well, I may have a kind of unorthodox view on this.  At the end of the day, all of this stuff that we do, all the stuff that we build, none of it really matters. We don’t know why we’re here on this planet. But what ultimately leads to a fulfilling life is building relationships and sharing yourself with other people.

Getting to know yourself better by getting to know other people better. And opening your eyes to the way in which people do things around the world, in different cultures, in different perspectives, in different opinions, and challenging the way that you’ve done things in an effort to ultimately get to know who you really are.

At the end of the day, I think that’s why it’s important that we not stay chained to our desks, and having our heads in our computers, acting as though the most important thing in the world is delivering these products, because they’re not. The reason the product exists, the reason that the companies exist, the reason that the industry exists is so that people can help each other better. Businesses become obsessed with making money – and that’s fine, that’s what we value in today’s society – but is thould be because when you’re able to stay in business, and continue to serve your customer: it really is about service. It’s about providing things to a person that they cannot provide to themselves without you.

Engaging with the community, getting out of the little box that you put yourself in, or that your manager puts you in, more often than not, recognizing that I am a human, you’re a human, the next person is a human, and that if we spend the time to learn what we are each doing, how we’re approaching the work, what it means personally to all of us, why we do it in the first place, we’re going to learn a lot more about ourselves, and it’s going to give us, personally, more meaning in everything that we do, in everything that we create.

If you yourself cannot empathize with the other people in your organization. If you cannot empathize with other designers in the community, if you cannot engage and develop strong personal relationships with other people as a human, you’re not going to be able to effectively design anything for the people that your company serves. So all of it, every last part of it, is ultimately the exercise that we all need to be the most effective designers that we can be. And being an effective designer, where you see that your work actually has impact, and it changes someone’s life, that helps you to be a happy and fulfilled person, and that’s really the only reason to do any of this.

If the work that you’re doing isn’t making you personally fulfilled, you’ve got to get out of there. You have to run, run, run, run, because life is way too short to waste a single moment doing something that you don’t love. And a lot of people who are stuck in the four walls of their office don’t realize just how hot the market is right now, just how burning the need is for people like us. So they fear that if they were to leave, they wouldn’t be able to find something else. And the only reason that they have that fear, and the only reason that they may go awhile without finding other gigs is because they haven’t truly been engaging with the community. And they haven’t really been opening their hearts and their minds to all of the things that are going on around us. There’s so much energy.

All you have to do is open yourself to it and you become a part of that.

-

CC attributions:

• Conferencebasics
• Pete Karl

If you are interested in the world of web design and portfolio creation, if you’re a creative, designer, illustrator; if you represent a studio or you’re a Freelance artist, please take the survey since you’re opinion is ultra valuable for us.

We are about to release great new features starting from September and beyond and we decided to focus really on the expectations of the community as our strategy will be – at least partially – crowdsourced

So: take the survey!

We ask you two small things: complete the survey – your feedback is essential to create the product you want – and send the survey via the sharing buttons below to your friends, colleagues or online groups, if you want to be more than awesome… Tweet this!

You will help us grow and make Superthemes even more fantastic than it is today!

First among this list of amazing folks that can inspire you, motivate you to pursue your challenging plans, and push you to follow your heart while building your professional path and expressing yourselves, today we host the awesome Jaime Derringer.

Jaime is the Founder and Executive Editor of Design Milk, an art and design blog sharing lots of new and fresh modern stuff. Jaime runs Design Milk for about 6 years now and the blog has been featured in the Los Angeles Times, Time Out New York, The San Francisco Chronicle, and is a staff pick at Google, Twitter and more.

Design Milk is a key daily inspiration for entertainers,  retailers, magazine editors and designers with over 1 million readers worldwide.

In 2010 Jaime even launched modern design blog Dog Milk to expose dog lovers to pet design that fits their uniquely modern sense of style. In addition, Jaime has been noted as an expert on design trends, speaks on design and design blogging, contributes to a multitude of design blogs and acts as a business consultant. She proudly lives in New Jersey with her husband, daughter, and their dog, Lulu.

[superthemes] Ciao Jaime, you know, it’s awesome to host you here on Superthemes Blog! You’re Design Milk main editor and founder, and you probably process tons of design related stories every day: what are the main themes behind deisign these days?

[Jaime Derringer] The biggest trends that I have seen over the past 6 years running the blogs are flat-packed, minimal waste products and interactive products. Both try to make our lives better in one way or another, so I suppose the overall theme is improving our quality of life.

[superthemes] What’s the very mission of Design Milk? I mean what are the leading ideas behind selecting the best news in design and playing this “curation” effort?

[Jaime Derringer] The mission of Design Milk is actually to help people. We’re not only delivering the news and sharing amazing stuff with readers, but we’re actually making real, valuable connections between designers, retailers, manufacturers and consumers. We’ve helped designers get their businesses off the ground by connecting them with the people needed to launch their product(s). Getting a “thank you” email from a designer for helping them get exposure is the driving factor behind what we do.

[superthemes] Isn’t the role of designers changing these days? I mean, now lots of tools related to prototyping and producing design objects – and things in general – are becoming more and more accessible (3d printing and things like Shapeways just to mention one aspect). How the designers are interpreting this new role? Many are becoming self-entrepreneur, producers, etc…

[Jaime Derringer] Designers not only need to create things we need, but they need to be able to solve problems, and push us out of our comfort zone. They are there to give us what we need but also tell us what we don’t realize we need. They are there to rethink how things function or how they look in order to solve problems or adapt to change. As you note, designers are now business people, too. With the Internet, young designers can launch their own studio in a matter of minutes (ed: creating their portfolio website with Superthemes!) , and with the advent of blogs, social media, and websites like Kickstarter, they now have an avenue to share and market their business. It’s a very exciting time!

[superthemes] Design is tribalizing much these days, thanks to things like crowdfunding platforms or social media for as you mentioned: the relationship between designers and fans is becoming much more tight, emotional.
What’s your point of view about this? How is design being affected?

[Jaime Derringer] I don’t think that design is being negatively affected by this relationship. I think when people know the stories behind the designs and can better understand what it takes to get things made, they become more connected to the design. They’re more invested. This can only improve things. Designers can also now directly hear the thoughts of the masses and adapt designs based on instant feedback. The accessibility of 3D printing and CNC machines has enabled design to become more adaptable on the fly – easily changed for specific needs. Design has become more customized – more personalized, therefore more personal.

[superthemes] What’s the role of the web for today’s designers and creators? can a designer really express herself, without learning how to use the internet in communiticating her ideas and learn about trends?

[Jaime Derringer] The web is essential for any designer who is considering going out on his or her own. Running a successful business these days often means having an online component. Moreover, blogs and other websites – like Design Milk – really help keep people on trend and up to date about what’s going on. I think knowing what your peers are doing is essential. With the web, you can know what students in Israel are doing and at the same time discover a design from South Korea or Brazil. It’s mind-boggling and overwhelming, but I think it’s critical for entrepreneurial designers.