We really enjoyed slewing together a week of Web Critiques for the Inspiredology community, giving proper light to one of our new projects. Here’s a quick recap and rapid fire Q&A with Andrew, Chad, and Myself.

Mashable. Our first Web Critique to start off the week fell a smidge flat. Partly because Mashable is so boring. While they make use of pretty good design philosophy, there really isn’t a whole long going on. Their brand is too weak and doesn’t quite break through the generic styling to give us much to chew on.

TheNextWeb was, I think, a nice transition from Mashable. We got a chance to introduce a quality blog with some nice styling and strong branding. It was a bit night and day where had a refreshing moment to look at TNW and get a feel for how different the blog was and the impression it made on us. Great design, backed by nice content and great functionality that was easy to use.

Smashing Magazine was just great timing. They happen to release a new visual update as we were planning Web Critique Week, I don’t think the timing could have been any better. With that said, we got to look at their new design and offer a little insight on the responsive design they built into it. Unfortunately, much of the Smashing Magazine brand isn’t translated as well on their new design and, personally, it fell flat overall.

Think Vitamin isn’t my favorite blog of all time, despite some of my high praises, but in a way, it rediscovered how some unique styling can be really refreshing. Some elegant design decisions on balance really seal the deal for me on this blog and was a blas to review and look at. Not much can be said about that footer, but we’ll leave it be for now.

Web Critique Q&A

Why did you decide to start Web Critiques?

Mike: When I was brought on board I wanted to bring my nature of critique that I had refined through the years of design and bring something new to the design community both for the Inspiredology community and outside of that. Andrew and Chad were great about letting me try out the idea…they liked it so I kept at.

Chad: Yeah, it was Mike’s idea to introduce Web Critiques – initially we did one a month, but we thought a whole week would really offer a lot of value and insight to our readers.

What was the reason for doing a whole week of Web Critiques?

Mike: We have been enjoying the Web Critiques and the value they were adding to The Lab. So we wanted to give them center stage and make the public more aware of these articles.

Chad: See my answer above

Do you think the Web Critique Week was a success?

Mike: I think the traffic probably agrees that we saw that the critiques were adding more value to the community. I would like to see more engagement in the discussion of the sites within the community, as our previous critiques have had nice community discussions.

Chad: Simple answer – Yes!

Andrew: Yes I think it was certainly a success. As Mike said, more engagement would have been amazing, so that we could get some good conversations going within each critique.

What would you have liked to have done differently with this week?

Mike: I wouldn’t have minded some more time on each review. I wish we could have broken things down more indepthly, but unfortunately we are limited in time.

Chad: I think we can take it to another level still, instead of just a critique – we can go deeper and maybe offer improvements. Show what Smashing Mag and Mashable might look like if we controlled it.

Andrew: It could have been interesting to get members of the community involved in the actual critique post, to offer another opinion outside of the Inspiredology family.

Will you be continuing to push the Web Critiques in the future?

Mike: Yes! Of course, we’re trying to get one solid critique a month.

Chad: For sure, I think this week proved it’s value to the community.

Are we gonna see another Web Critique Week?

Mike: It is very likely. This week, as you probably could tell, we focused on blogs. Who knows when the next time will be or what the focus will be on, but its likely we’ll see this again.

Chad: We will be sure to revisit the traffic and value but I have no doubt that this won’t be the last one.

Anything you’d like to add about your Web Critiques?

Mike: We have been trying to get community to feel engaged, offer feedback, and want to get their own work critiqued. I think these critiques, those centered around our community, would provide the BEST value for Inspiredology and whoever submitted it. If you have a site you want critiqued, send us an email or tweet us! Its pretty easy and we’re mostly friendly dudes. We’d love to also hear what you think about these critiques in terms of content, style, or anything in particular!

Chad: What Mike said!

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