Hasta La Ideas

Goodbye, Speak Up

I mentioned it earlier in the week but didn’t have time to post. I’m really bummed about the recent demise of the design blog Speak Up.

Founders and husband/wife team Armin Vit and Bryony Gomez-Palacio this week decided, after 7 years, to close down the popular design blog in part because they said they simply can no longer find the time to write the kind of insightful, provocative entries that made the blog influential when it first launched.

As the owner of both an oft-neglected blog and almost abandoned podcast, I can certainly understand. The big problem is the void that is now left by Speak Up’s departure. The truth is, there are few compelling design voices left in the blogosphere these days. Too much design conversation is tactical rather than strategic. Mostly about how to do things — write edgey CSS code or achieve sexy Photoshop techniques — rather than why we do things and how design helps solve problems on a strategic level.

Speak Up was great because it wasn’t afraid to spark sometimes epic debates within the design community that took a peek into a variety of controversial matters. So who is left to carry the mantle? I guess Design Observer is the most prominent design blog left. The scary thing is that I see a similar phenomenon at Design Observer that I saw a year or so ago at Speak Up. Gradually fewer of the posts were very topical, the entries are not updated quite as often and the conversation doesn’t seem to ever really have much “bite” any more. Design Observer used to be good for a good dust up once in a while and occasionally had the ability to really piss one off. Not so much lately. I wonder what happens if in 6 months to a year, the industry finds itself sans both Design Observer as well as Speak Up?

Hopefully this paves the way for a wave of new design voices in the blogosphere. Who knows? For now, all I know is that it’s very silent. I, for one, will miss them.

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