DISCLAIMER: The following is not a question, nor an amazing InDesign technique I recently discovered. Rather, it’s more like a blog with my thoughts, ideas and recommendations for this amazing website indesignsecrets.com.
Did I just say ‘website’? Take that back, please.
To me, and I believe to the rest of you reading this as well, InDesignSecrets is not a website. Rather, it’s a family. The foundation of the entire website is not built on a teacher-student relationship, rather it’s a community where everybody learns from anyone. This is obvious when you take a look in the comment section of any post. The intelligent and respectful dialog between people of all walks of life (something found rarely on today’s web…), where brilliant ideas are shared and created is simply refreshing. All the authors are down-to-earth, reply to any comment on a post or question on a forum. (I myself have asked my fair share of questions from them (read: David and Anne-Marie) via email and was surprised of how they went out of the way to solve my problems.)
So, what am I trying to convey here?
Well, obviously I want to express my gratitude. But that’s not really all.
I believe this relationship can be taken a step further. As I stumble across comments made by members, I notice that in some cases the members are smarter than the authors! No offense… I don’t mean this in a general sense. (Because who knows better InDesign than David?! Or Anne-Marie?! …) But after all, each and every individual has encountered from time to time their own InDesign challenges and their own brilliant techniques to tackle it. And this is something that you don’t ‘learn’ or ‘read’, it’s experience. And as long as you haven’t been faced with that particular problem, you can be as knowledgeable as you are, and still not know of that idea. Even I myself have some interesting ideas (maybe not earth-shattering… but still worth it) that I would love to share with the world.
So with that said, why don’t you (I’m talking to you, InDesignSecrets’ staff) set up a special ‘Members Blog’ so to speak, where anyone and everyone can share their own techniques and ideas that they have stumbled upon in their own InDesign journey. Not like the forums, but rather a real authoring place, with the ability to attach photos and snapshots, format text etc. And then, when any post is worth mentioning, to re-post it on the home page together with the ‘official’ posts.
If you’re worried about quality control, then you can create a vetting process where every post gets vetted for quality, so no amateurish stuff or spam get uploaded, and the spelling and grammar are correct.
I believe this opens up a huge new window of opportunity in the InDesignSecrets community.
I still have some ideas in this context that I want to share, but this is it for now.
What do you say? Does my idea have merit?
If you agree, please comment below so the InDesignSecrets staff take notice. And if you don’t agree, then please let me know why not.
Thanks in advance,
A. Singer
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