Some New Digital Sites on the Block

I took a note of a couple of new sites recently, because of their unusualness. With quite a few digital retail stores closing down (as normal) over the last few months, it becomes difficult to keep a track of all of them. Although I don’t want to say too much about these ones, they do offer some unique services, and for free.

DigiDesign Resort

Going to the homepage of DigiDesign Resort, I must admit, I’m not sure how I’m meant to find anything. It’s not like a normal retail store at all, with a storefront. Instead, DigiDesign Resort appears to have been setup as a set of forums. The homepage suggests you can register for free and you get your own homepage - where you are free to advertise anything you may want - from digital designs, to simply using the homepage as a gallery for your digital layouts. The site also suggests that you can make friends and comment similar to the social networking sites MySpace or Facebook.

Designs can be advertised for free not only on your own homepage, but on the DigiDesign Resort forums. To muddy things a little, the Resort is also advertising commercial use products and a monthly grab bag which you need to sign up for.

At this point in time there are over 300 members registered on DigiDesign Resort, but it’s difficult to tell if they all have the homepages as promised, because those aren’t easily accessible or advertised. It is not until you go to register that a separate set of links is presented to you, via the forum boards. It’s here that you notice that a gallery exists for layouts and product previews (although not obvious from the homepage).

There still remain some design problems behind the scenes. The front page is done with Joomla, a free content management system. The gallery and forums are using different software for their own renditions (vForums for the former, Photopost VBgallery for the later). But if you click on one link found on top of the gallery itself, there are php errors where pages haven’t been created.

Through the forums (and the one FAQ) an emphasis appears placed on the Designer Resource grabbag - which can be purchased for a set amount of days via Paypal. But despite all the work which still might be needed in getting this site cogged together, the services offered appear quite vibrant, as does the forum community with some services offered in there which piqued my own interest. There are areas there to offer all kinds of designer services on the forums - even web design, which isn’t filled as yet. And it’s all unrestricted advertising!

Created by Maren and Monja, two German digital scrappers, DigiDesign Resort has a lot of promise, and quite a lot under offer.

Take a look at DigiDesign Resort for yourself.

Strictly Reveal

This blog has a “No Anonymity” Policy. It is owned by Melanie Morales (which is quite an interesting coincidence of a name given the policy). Melanie is also a digital designer.

Strictly Reveal accepts designer grab-bags - from the designers themselves - and reveals the contents before they go off sale. Critiques, criticisms or smack comments aren’t allowed - comments are moderated to stop this.

So, simply put, if you’re interested in a designer grab-bag, this blog may offer you a preview to help your decision. However, only if the designer wishes for this in the first place. Strictly Reveal does have a range of designers who do do that - the list can be found along the right-hand sidebar under categories.

Strictly Reveal also operates quite proactively in seeking support with advertising blinkies on the sidebars. But it also receives notification when blogged about and inserts links and blinkies onto the sidebar for fans. So strictly speaking (like the pun?) Strictly Reveal should strictly pick up on this blog about it.

And yes, I am a fan, it’s a great concept for a service blog for the industry and I hope more designers make use for it. If people really want to make a good buying decision, a reveal of the contents - away from the surprise factor intended in the store itself - is a good service to use. And buyers who don’t know of it, or want to take away the element of surprise, will not make use of Strictly Reveal in that instance. It’s a win-win situation, as far as I can see it.

Go to Strictly Reveal and have a look.