DBI graphic design companies: blogging or not?

I thought it would be interesting to look at all of the graphic design companies listed as members of Design Business Ireland website (accessed on 05 April 2009) and see whether any have a company blog linked to from their primary company website. This does not preclude their being such a blog, but where none is visible on the company website an inference can be made as to how the blog is positioned within the company’s mix of corporate communications. Of the 46 DBI members on the list, six had corporate blogs and forty had none.

These six member companies had a link to their corporate blog on their company web sites.

BFK  Most of the company web site is a news blog of projects, with multiple an RSS feeds, but no comments or social networking features.

Creative Media  A 'News Blog' link from the home page.

Penhouse  A 'Fresh Air Blog' link from the home page, with comments and an RSS feed, but no social networking features.

The Brand Union  An 'Our Blogs' link from the international home page leads to the Dublin office blog, with comments and an RSS feed, but no social networking features.

Rain Communications  A 'blog' link from the home page, with comments, social networking features and an RSS feed.

20-20 Vision  The news section of their website is in a blog, with comments, social networking features and an RSS feed.

These forty member companies had no link to a corporate blog on their company web sites.

Affinity, AKGraphics, Baseline, Big Fish Design, Blink Design, Catalysto, Creative Inc, Dara Creative, Dcoy Design, Design Associates, Designbank, Design Factory, Designers Ink, Designinmind, Designworks, Drawinginc, Eamon Sinnott & Partners, Form, Frank, Fuse Graphic Design, GSDC, HamillBosket, Huguenot, IDEA, Konnect Media, Martello Media, Mesh Design Consultants, Neworld Associates, Pica Design, Positive Design Consultants, Principle, Profiles Design & Marketing, Proviz Design & Visualisation, Rain Design Partners, Raven Design, Roomthree Design, Red Dog, Source Design Consultants, Totem Visual Communications, Zebedee Marketing & Design.

This list does not capture any company design blogs which are not linked from the company's primary website, or any personal blogs maintained by company directors or employees.

Small pieces, loosely connected

After a very quick scan through the blogs submitted after yesterday’s email request it strikes me that there are no A-list or Go-To blogs in the Irish Graphic Design sector. Only a few blogs were mentioned more than once by respondents (in what was admittedly a very small and unscientific sample).

Where are the Seth Godins, the Hugh Macleods and John Grubers of this sector? Given the small size of the Irish graphic design sector and the smaller subset one would expect to actively blog within that, perhaps small, ultra-niche atomized, personalized audiences are all that one can expect. Shirkey’s power law analysis of blogging would suggest that one or two of these blogs should have gained a broader audience and expanded beyond their initial audience.

Actions: examine the sample blogs.
— Is their content very personalized, only of interest to friends and acquaintances?
— Is their content primarily of interest only to the author (diary blog, design reference for self)?
— Is their material published on an ad-hoc basis, with long intermissions?
— Does the blog promote the designer or their business?

Initial call for Irish design blogs

I sent this email out to certain contacts of mine to gather some initial blog addresses.

I am researching the uses of blogs by Irish design companies and by Irish designers.

What I need to do at this stage is pull together a quick list of blogs by Irish designers and if possible Irish design companies. So if you can send me on links to any that you know of, your contribution will be most appreciated.

This is very preliminary work, so go as broad and wide as you can — I will filter later. It's more important that I get a comprehensive sample to start off with.

I'll just be looking through them — at this stage this is not a call for people to interview or anything as involved as that.

The term 'blog' is wilfully elusive: so if you are not sure if something is bloggy enough or not, just go ahead and add it in anyway.

I'm also interested in designer's personal blogs. Whether they are freelancers using their blog as part of marketing (Like Benny here) or designers doing their own thing quite separate from whatever design studio they work in. (Like Con here.)

Also the blogs don't have to be writing-orientated. Link-blogs or design reference blogs full of deadly cool stuff are just as valid. (Like this kind of thing.)

I'm also looking for any Irish design companies or designers micro-blogging on Twitter (like this). In my research I will eventually need to focus on applied use of this for some defined aim: most likely marketing. But as this stage just seeing whether many in design industry are availing of this channel at all shall be productive.

I will aggregate all of the results onto a web page as some kind of shared resource listing. I will circulate that once I get it lashed together.

Also, do feel free to forward this email on to anyone you know who may be able to point me towards some relevant blogs. (That way I can tick the box beside Research Aim of “Leveraging the sophisticated network effects of online social networks to gather information”.)

Thanks in advance.
Aiden

Irish design blogs listing

As part of my research I am going to gather a representative sample of Irish design company and designer's blogs. For now this list is unfiltered. It will eventually be categorised as personal blogs, group blogs, corporate blogs, etc depending on whatever taxonomy I decide to impose.

Update: I have decided to move the lists into a seperate dedicated section of this site and they now can be found under Blog Lists in the top navigation.