Surveying the creative waters

Instead of dealing with important matters of the college debt kind, I got caught up in researching graphic-related sites. Believe it or not, I have never been one to frequent graphic sites and simply take in whatever I come across while spending my usual time on the net. However, I felt that it would be wise to see what is out there as a way of educating myself and to streamline my ideas. The sites that I took particular interest in were:

• Aethereality.net (have seen the name before in the past)
• Minitokyo (knew of)
• ChanLu Design
• Owaranai Kiss Designs
• &. dixy-pixy.org
• Krystalis Designs

The purpose of this was four-fold:

• To see what the majority of the sites out there specialize in.
• To take note of how many of these sites are actually active.
• To see which of them are horrible / venerable sites.
• To have a sense of what I can do better and/or differently to set me apart from being just another graphics site.

What I found was:

• Many of them specialize in pre-made (designed & coded for download) anime themes or are just anime-centered in their designs.
• Many of them are still very much alive, if not sort of alive.
• The majority of the sites are skilled in their creativity and web coding experience.
• The issue is not what I can do better, but what I can do differently.

So, if I am to go along with EtherFuture Designs, then I need to take a different approach to my website in its design and in overall focus. I then wanted to pinpoint why was it that it was necessary to (or already) have my site be different in its content and purpose for existence. I came up with a few things that I don’t do or would not want to do:

• The majority predominately cater towards a female-oriented audience in their choice of color, design, and overall feels (e.g. pretty, shiny, cute, romantic, etc.).
• Nearly all of them [heavily] utilize Brushes (pre-made artistic designs for Photoshop) and/or make their own.
• Most of them focus on graphical content and nothing else.
• Most of them take no interest in building community (is only creator-to-visitor communication).

In some ways, competition is not my goal. However, I know the net is a fickle place where users hop from site to site every day. They will only stay with the ones they respect or appreciate, and the others will never be seen again. If I’m going to put something out in the fray, I want it to make a direct impact the moment they enter any part of the site. At the same time, I want to make sure that the site doesn’t become a burden and always puts a smile on my face. With that and these other considerations above in mind, I think I can make some wise choices in whether I can and should go along with investing time, effort, and money into a creative website. Besides, it’s about time I learn PHP and review Javascript.

Man am I glad I work for a company that specializes in this sort of thing. Talk about putting your experience to use.

Currently Listening To: Bana – Witch Hunter Robin ED – “half-pain”