Passion Drives First Blog Network for Creative Pros

Press Release

Designorati is building a 360-degree view of the creative world while revolutionizing the blogging revolution.

PORTLAND, Ore.—22 Sept., 2005—Designorati​.com, the first blog net­work exclu­sive­ly for cre­ative pro­fes­sion­als, by cre­ative pro­fes­sion­als, and dri­ven by pas­sion, offi­cial­ly debuted today. Beginning with nine Topics rang­ing from Graphic Design and Illustration through Creative Culture and Strategy, Designorati’s mis­sion of report­ing on all pro­fes­sion­al cre­ative dis­ci­plines and con­cerns is well underway.

“First and fore­most, Designorati is about passion,” says Publisher and founder, Pariah S. Burke. “Creation is pas­sion, and any writ­ing about, or in sup­port of, pas­sion must itself arise from passion.

“Creative pro­fes­sion­als are not cre­atives because we chose to be, but because we must be. Somewhere, deep inside each of us, is an unde­ni­able com­pul­sion to cre­ate, whether that’s with pix­els, ink, fab­ric, met­al, or words. Designorati is writ­ten to the pas­sion in every cre­ative, and by the same pas­sion with­in the mem­bers of Team:Designorati—the peers of every work­ing creative.”

“Designorati is about what moves you, creatively,” explains Samuel John Klein, edi­tor of Designorati:Cartography and Designorati:Typography. “We stand on the shoul­ders of giants; our pas­sion makes us look deep into the roots of what we love, and informs what we do now. Designorati looks to lib­er­ate those sources of inspi­ra­tion, and dri­ve those pas­sions even further.”

Creative Fields and Designorati Topics

Designorati is divid­ed into Topics, self-contained web­sites devot­ed to areas of focus cor­re­spond­ing to work­ing cre­atives’ inter­ests. Topics such as Designorati:Graphic Design, Designorati:Illustration, Designorati:Desktop Publishing, and Designorati:Web Design often speak to the tools and tech­niques of their respec­tive and broad cre­ative dis­ci­plines, oth­er Topics zero in on cre­ative inter­ests that have large­ly gone unrecognized.

Topics like Designorati:Strategy, which address­es work­flows and high-level decision-makers, and Designorati:In-House, the first such site devot­ed entire­ly to the unsung heroes of in-house cor­po­rate design, pro­vide views upon those areas of the cre­ative world that rarely see the light of editorial.

Designorati:Creative Culture lives up to its mis­sion and tagline of “you are more than your work” by speak­ing to the cul­ture of pro­fes­sion­al cre­atives. While oth­er Topics speak to the voca­tion of cre­atives, address­ing such sub­jects as copy­rights for cre­atives, soft­ware tuto­ri­als, and effec­tive use of typog­ra­phy, Designorati:Creative Culture feeds the creative’s soul with news and opin­ion on music, fash­ion, toys, gad­gets, gear, and sources of inspiration.

Currently Designorati fea­tures nine Topics:

• Designorati:Cartography
• Designorati:Creative Culture
• Designorati:Desktop Publishing
• Designorati:Graphic Design
• Designorati:Illustration
• Designorati:In-House
• Designorati:Strategy
• Designorati:Typography
• Designorati:Web Design

According to Cate Indiano, author of Adobe InDesign CS2 @work and edi­tor of Designorati:Strategy: “The world of design is multi-dimensional and I can’t think of a sin­gle resource that cov­ers all aspects of its many dis­ci­plines. What a great way to stay informed, expe­ri­ence thought pro­vok­ing dia­log about the indus­try and enhance your exist­ing skill set with use­ful instruc­tion. Designorati is a â€˜one-stop shop’ for any­one who cre­ative­ly com­mu­ni­cates for a living.”

In time Designorati will encom­pass Topics rep­re­sen­ta­tive of all areas of pro­fes­sion­al cre­ativ­i­ty, writ­ten some of the most pas­sion­ate peo­ple work­ing in those areas. Additional Topics are already in devel­op­ment, and pas­sion­ate, tal­ent­ed edi­tors and writ­ers with new Topic ideas are being active­ly recruited.

A tenth Topic, Designorati:360 Blog, chron­i­cles the oper­a­tions of, and pro­vides an insider’s view into, Designorati itself.

A Revolutionary Partnership

Although rad­i­cal, the fact that every Designorati edi­tor and writer shares in an equal split of 50% of the site’s gross rev­enue, is not what makes Designorati’s busi­ness mod­el rev­o­lu­tion­ary. Neither is the fact that edi­tors and writ­ers retain the copy­rights in and to the work they pub­lish on Designorati. What makes Designorati’s busi­ness mod­el tru­ly rev­o­lu­tion­ary in both the worlds of pro­fes­sion­al media and blog­ging is that its edi­tors and writ­ers will own it.

“Designorati defines the word equi­ty as it should be defined: Ownership and inter­est in Designorati itself,” states Burke. “No oth­er blog­ging net­work or media has ever offered gen­uine equity—and meant it.” Each Designorati edi­tor and writer who spends one year writ­ing con­sis­tent­ly and well; being a team play­er; uphold­ing the Designorati val­ues of integri­ty, hon­or, fair­ness, respect, and hon­esty, and; help­ing to build the brands of Designorati and its Topics, will earn part­ner­ship in the company.

A Revolutionary Blog Network

Another hall­mark of Designorati’s sin­gu­lar­i­ty in the blog­ging world is its strong con­cen­tra­tion on qual­i­ty ahead of quan­ti­ty. Designorati staff mem­bers are required to pub­lish a min­i­mum of only three full-length arti­cles or ten short (few­er than 500 word) arti­cles per month—a sharp con­trast to the triple-digit month­ly require­ments of oth­er blog­ging networks.

With few­er arti­cles due per month, Designorati’s edi­tors and writ­ers are freed to spend the time nec­es­sary to research and write arti­cles of qual­i­ty and sub­stance. The team nature of Designorati, which enables every edi­tor and writer to pub­lish on any Designorati Topic site, keeps con­tent fresh and con­stant­ly infor­ma­tive with­out exert­ing undue pres­sure on any one team member.

Designorati views itself as part blog net­work, part tra­di­tion­al news media, prac­tic­ing what it calls Next Generation Journalism.

Burke explains the dis­tinc­tion: “I’m reluc­tant to call Designorati a â€˜blog network.’ Out there are some amaz­ing and pro­fes­sion­al­ly writ­ten blogs—most of the Designorati found­ing mem­bers have cre­at­ed and writ­ten pro­fes­sion­al blogs themselves—nevertheless the term ‘blog’ often equates in the pub­lic con­scious­ness to con­ver­sa­tion­al, mav­er­ick, and lack­ing in stan­dard­ized prac­tices. Designorati is at the fore­front of Next Generation Journalism, which incor­po­rates the best of blog­ging and tra­di­tion­al jour­nal­ism into some­thing else, some­thing new.”

From blogs, Designorati takes self-editing, pub­lic account­abil­i­ty, instan­ta­neous time to pub­li­ca­tion, and the belief that every arti­cle is a dia­log between read­ers and writ­ers. Unlike most blogs, how­ev­er, it has a style guide like any magazine’s, and Team:Designorati adheres to jour­nal­is­tic ethics guide­lines such as those estab­lished by the American Society of Magazine Editors.

“I am a mem­ber of Designorati because of what it stands for,” says Elisabetta Bruno, Designorati:Desktop Publishing edi­tor. “I have pas­sion for what I am doing—passion and a pur­pose I’ve had my whole life. Designorati takes that pas­sion and car­ries its mes­sage through­out the design­ers’ world. Designorati looks at pro­fes­sion­al cre­ativ­i­ty from every angle—providing a 360-degree view of the cre­ative world.”

Designorati is cur­rent­ly accept­ing appli­ca­tions for new writ­ers on its exist­ing Topics, as well as pro­pos­als for new Topics relat­ed to pro­fes­sion­al creativity.

About Designorati

Designorati (http://​desig​no​rati​.com) strives to achieve a 360-Degree View of the Creative World by cov­er­ing all areas of inter­est to the cre­ative pro­fes­sions and cre­ative cul­ture. Designorati is pub­lished by Pariah S. Burke, the cre­ator and editor-in-chief of Quark VS InDesign (http://​quarkvsin​de​sign​.com), and the cre­ator and for­mer edi­tor of the Design Weblog, the Magazine Design Weblog, and the (Unofficial) Photoshop Weblog for Weblogs, inc.

Team:Designorati mem­bers are locat­ed through­out the United States and around the world. Their bios and cre­den­tials are avail­able at http://​desig​no​rati​.com/​a​b​o​u​t​/team/ .

This doc­u­ment is per­ma­nent­ly archived in the Press Room.