Sidebar Creative: The Next Steps
It’s been over a year now since Sidebar Creative was announced. During that year the four of us have accomplished plenty, and dreamed far more. So we thought it was high-time to portray that matured concept with a redesign and enhancement of our site.
An Updated Design
The first thing you’ll notice is a new, updated design. Keeping a very similar feel to the previous version, we made a few graphical refinements sprinkled with better usability and better use of imagery. We also added a lot of new content. We’ve taken the opportunity to showcase some of our publications, and our consulting and workshop opportunities (I’ll touch more on this later) in addition to our portfolio.
Building Applications
Over the year the four of us have collaborated on a number of applications, some which haven’t launched yet, but many that have. MyMileMarker was one of the first that saw the light of day, and has proven to be a useful tool for nearly 10,000 users. Next up was Snitter, a Twitter client written by Jonathan Snook using Adobe AIR. Sidebar contributed some theme goodness, too. Snook and Dan Rubin followed that up with Overheard.it, an application that pulls in select tweets from Twitter for your amusement. And Bryan Veloso has just released Django Pluggables, a simple, helpful resource for all you Django folks out there.
It’s been really fun to build these sites together. Even if not all of us ‘touch’ a particular product, we’ve all been in contact, sharing ideas, concerns, and code to help make them what they are. I’ve been really excited and impressed with how well this remote collaboration has worked, and we’re only just now getting into the groove.
To help promote these sites, we’re putting a small network bar across the top. As we add more sites, you’ll see them added there, so you can easily get from one network site to another.
Workshops and Consulting
The four of us have been wanting to expand beyond project and application work for some time. In the past year we’ve all had the opportunity to speak, teach, and share our knowledge, and we think this is a big future of Sidebar Creative. So in addition to offering corporate training and education, we’re starting Sidebar Workshops, a one-day two-session workshop for designers and developers.
We plan to keep things small and intimate, limiting registration sizes and traveling to locations that aren’t normally hit by the larger conferences and workshops. So no flights, no hotel, just come spend the day with us, and learn some tips and tricks we’ve picked up along the way. We’re looking for ideas on where to start, so if you’d be interested in attending, be sure to let us know your closest major city so we can add it to the list. We’re really excited about this, and can’t wait to get them started, hopefully this fall.
Check It Out
So go visit the site and poke around a little. We hope it helps show a little more of ourselves and our goals for the collective. Here’s to another great year!
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Published April 09, 2008 by:
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So far there are 15 comments.
Hi, Really nice site. I wish we’d have in Poland the same good very creative team. Very nice job.
April 10th, 2008
Great to see Sidebar is stepping out for some workshops. Still curious what a project with all that brainpower behind it would look like.
April 10th, 2008
I love the the recent re-align of the site. It brings more content to the table, more calls to action (books, workshops, client work), and more examples of the work you guys have done (and are doing) in the community and for clients.
April 10th, 2008
I’m still sadden to see that Automattic chose someone other than you to do the WordPress 2.5 redesign.
Long live Tiger! :)
April 10th, 2008
ovewrheard.it the design looks like twitter but I like it!
April 16th, 2008
Yes, Tim, that’s a pity.
April 21st, 2008
Let me know if you ever make it to Northern California. I’d be interested in checking out your workshop.
By the way awesome job on the way you handle the replies on this site! I like seeing they typeing.
April 21st, 2008
@ADAC: this kind of Live-Preview is available for several blog-engines, for example BlogEngine.NET @Steve: I thought Microsoft does everything inhouse – so I was impressed seeing, that you were involved in the asp.net website. Awesome.
April 24th, 2008
Pretty nice site. Good job!
April 28th, 2008
Your redesign looks great! Congrats!
April 28th, 2008
hehey i like the style !!!
May 1st, 2008
the new design looks like web2.0, that’s nice!
May 5th, 2008
This new design looks cool and i love it very much!
May 5th, 2008
Wow only a year, it seems like longer then that since i first started using MyMileMarker.
For a young brand, SideBar has done some really great stuff and i’m always looking out for “what’s next”. The site looks great, you have completely nailed usability and style.
On the Portfolio page i noticed Google listed, i never knew you done work for them.. I’ll have to dig deeper :)
Just to note, i’m getting quite a few Mephisto errors on Orderedlist.
May 7th, 2008
Really nice design Now in e-net are many good looking www :) It’s good to can make nice and clean layouts
GJ
greetings, Carol S.
May 8th, 2008