Another article I have to forget in order to succeed

[elfs]

Museum Quality or Market Success.

This is one of those articles that depresses me. I love The Dieline, and all the brilliant student work, but the message of this article is to not exceed any given cliche' by too much, or you'll be doomed.

You see, everything I've learned about social network design is going into the Sekrit Project, and one of the things I wanted to do is make smut safe to consume-- to make the table of contents and so forth look less like porn and more like something you'd feel comfortable reading on a bus. With the advent of pads and tablets and smartphones and so forth, the last remaining "right" tasks of erotica distribution are public acceptibility and monetization.

But this article makes it sound as if, if you hit that note where people over your shoulder need to actually read in order to be shocked-- a scan is not enough-- you won't find your audience, because they're still expecting garish red backgrounds, out-of-date static layouts, and cheesy ornaments. And a layout that looks more like the NY Times and less like the back cover of Penthouse won't sell.

Comments

[codeamazon.livejournal.com]

I say BS. The Kraft example is terrible -- the "new" is sterile and uninteresting. It's a great example of meeting the letters without having life.

The way people buy things is changing. Experiment, then report back.