PSDFan Extra

What a Year!

Looking back, 2008 (at least from the end of June onwards) has been a crazy year for me. Launching PSDFAN turned out to be a great decision, and the site has gone from strength to strength. It’s also handy to make this post today as it was the site’s 6 month anniversary a couple of days ago. I just wanted to thank all of my loyal readers, subscribers and contributers for all their support. Seriously, without you all this place just wouldn’t work.

I thought that rather than drone on I would give a quick summary of the past 6 months, and let you see the best of over 35 tutorials and countless other posts.

JUNE

PSDFAN is officially launched! – Nobody has heard of PSDFAN before, but I pick up a few helpful comments from the blogging community and the site seems to be welcomed by all.

Time for a Grungy Text Tutorial – The most popular tutorial of the 2 published at the end of June, receiving over 40 comments to date. It seems that people appreciate a good text tutorial.

JULY

I start listening more to what my users want – I didn’t know what to expect from this suggestion format, but people started providing some really cool ideas for me to work into my upcoming tutorials.

July also saw my most popular tutorial to date – My exploding laptop screen tutorial has amassed 74 comments to date, and is still proving popular amongst designers. This is motivation for me to come up with unique, inspiring tutorials.

AUGUST

I take some inspiration from Justin Timberlake, and the resulting tutorial goes down really well – It’s obvious that people appreciate good lighting effects, so long as they are integrated into unique, striking overall designs.

I start to provide more freebies for my loyal readers – This paper texture set is well received, and motivates me to provide more and better freebies for people.

SEPTEMBER

I write my first proper drawing tutorial – It turns out that a lot of people wanted to know how to draw a photo realistic wine bottle from scratch. This kind of tutorial takes far longer to write, and is very detailed, but I’m planning more like it for the future.

I start experimenting with roundup posts – Whilst my roundup of the 25 best drawing tutorials doesn’t receive a ton of comments, it does get stumbled A LOT, which is partly responsible for September drawing in a massive 120,000 unique visitors.

OCTOBER

October is a very busy month for me personally, but I manage to crank out a few nice tutorials – This tutorial on creating a firey guitar is detailed and hopefully practical for people.

I launch the PSDFAN Flickr Group, hoping to grow the great community here.

NOVEMBER

PSDFAN hosts it’s first contest (of many to come). – It goes down really well and all prize winners are happy.

November is the month for quality interviews – This interview with Fabio Sasso is a real insight into a talented designer.

Other landmarks include breaking 1000 RSS subscribers, launching our wallpaper section and starting up daily image inspiration.

DECEMBER

December offers readers a tutorial to create Christmas Wrapped Text – This festive tutorial makes it into quite a few roundup posts on other blogs

I also compile every great photoshop lighting tutorial ever – this HUGGGE roundup of 75 awesome tutorials is in my opinion PSDFAN’s greatest resource within one post, although it doesn’t receive as much attention as I’d expected.

I try a more ‘article’ like format and decide to discuss bold typography. – This post makes the front page of delicious and also gets stumbled a lot, drawing in a huge amount of traffic.

2009?

So what about 2009? Well despite all of the great achievements of 2008 I feel that in many ways the site has been plagued with bad luck. I’ve had several internet downtimes (including right now, as I’m forced to type from my friends house until my connection is back up on the 8th). I’ve also really felt the pressures of academic work, and sadly this site has had to suffer. However! The good news is that I only plan on making things better. A few things that I have planned for the near future:

The PSDFAN redesign has been designed, and is currently in the development stage, expect to see this go live soon!

With the redesign will come a members area, which will provide useful tutorial files and also some great community features.

I’ll be growing the community far more in the new year, from giving more precedence to our Flickr Group, to including a user link feed. I’ll also be accepting guest posts, which should increase the number of updates.

There will be far FAR more tutorials, especially after I’m done with mid-January exams. I know that I’ve not had the time to write quite as many recently, but the tutorial-inspiration post balance will be corrected.

Flickr Group Roundup

As the Flickr Group smashed the 100 members mark not long ago I figured it was time for a roundup of my favorite designs. The group is now home to almost 500 awesome designs, so please go and and submit yours today!

What do you Want to See?

In the new year I’m extremely keen to listen to what my users want in terms of content, or anything else. I’ll be hosting a couple of polls to gather this data, but until then I’d really appreciate and suggestions, ideas or comments you may have.

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