Whether you’re just starting out as designer or if you’re a professional, it’s always nice to have your work evaluated objectively. But you have to admit, it’s quite hard to get unbiased feedback on the web and offline.
And more than just good feedback, we all feel the need for our work to be viewed and appreciated. A little boost to the ego once in a while is a great way to keep confidence and motivation levels high when you’re working hard on something you’re not quite sure is good.
That’s why web design communities are so popular. They give designers a chance to view other people’s work, connect with them, share ideas and offer constructive criticism. In return, they get more visibility for their own work, grow their professional networks, find out how people judge designs and even find clients who might approach them based on what they’ve posted.
Here are 7 great design communities that you should definitely know about if you’re a designer:
Dribbble
Dribbble simply states that it’s ‘show and tell for designers’. It’s not just a place for designers to connect with each other, but also somewhere where prospective clients can find great designers. Dribbble manages to keep up the consistency of its quality (which is pretty high) by making its membership process invite-only.
Behance
Behance is a leading online portal where designers can showcase their creative work. It tries to reduce the gap between talent and opportunity by attracting companies and clients, as well as distributing work to other online galleries to increase exposure. It’s one of the fairly popular online design communities.
HOWDesign
HOWDesign originally started out as print magazine and it still carries vestiges of its past on its site. It’s different from Behance and Dribbble in that it’s still a web magazine that features articles, design work and useful resources for designers. You can get your work on HOWDesign by writing a guest post or by entering their design competitions. HOWDesign also has its own forum for designers and also hosts offline conferences and events for some valuable face-to-face networking.
Forrst
Forsst is a design community for people who build products. It’s more focused in that it caters to visual designers, interaction designers and web developers who have built or want to build their own online product. Again, it’s an invite-only community.
DeviantArt
Do you love doodling art on notebooks or do you create online comics because you think it’s fun? Then the DeviantArt community is the best place for you. You can showcase art, graphic design, photography, interfaces, digital art and even literature. (We found this handy guide to scriptwriting for film.)
So if web design is more a hobby than a profession, you might like DeviantArt’s community a better place to hang out in.
So if web design is more a hobby than a profession, you might like DeviantArt’s community a better place to hang out in.
Fontli
Mad about typography? Fontli is a social network for ‘typoholics’. While most people post interesting type that they’ve seen somewhere, you can also share your own typography successes. The community identifies unusual fonts and has a constant conversation going on about them!
Hunie
Hunie is a collaborative design community that focuses on peer-to-peer critiques. It has a community of helpful experts who leave critiques for promising designs and it also lets you critique other designers’ work and help them improve.
Liked this post? You might also like 5 Great Sites to Follow for Web Design Inspiration.
So, what do you think ?