What is a personal site?
In the past few years, making your own personal art on the Web has grown into a world-wide craze. Nowadays, designers from every corner of the planet are turning out personal sites: little places of their own full of text, images, and motion graphics.
To try to find out why, AdobeStudio enlisted the help of Mike Cina, a Minneapolis-based designer who has been building personal sites for years. Cina helped us select six other artists, whose work appears on these pages. Then, we opened a dialogue with designers from around the world. Some are personal site builders, others aren't, but they all brought different perspectives and different ideas on the subject.

Note: this Center Stage discussion took place before the existence of the Center Stage application. Future archived discussions will probably not look much like this one.






Holodeck
Holodeck comes from Los Angeles designer Mat Mejia, currently a Senior Art Director for DNA Studios. The site features interviews, an active Web log, and occasional art by Mejia and his friends.

What is a personal site?
Mike Cina: Usually they are informative or entertaining or both or neither. The creator has complete content and visual control, making it an extension of themselves.
Eric Vardon: You have total control of everything in the site. What you want to do is show off your design skills and present your own type of style.

Mat Mejia: Our personal shrines. A place to experiment, break rules, have fun.

Hawken Bright-Roberts: Tricky this. For me, the way I see it, a personal site should contain all of the following 1. A blogg. [Web log] 2. A description of yourself. 3. Some sub sections detailing your interests and hobbies. 4. BBS or guest book, even a small and non-complex forum.

Francis Lam: There shouldn't be any restrictions. When I have an idea, I'll immediately put it on.

Fernando Costa: I used to paint and draw constantly. Nowadays, glued to my seat, in front of a monitor all day, it's the way I've found to say what I want.

Scott Wenner: To put it simply, it's a labor of love.






The Horus Project
The Horus Project comes courtesy of three designers based in London, Ontario: Eric Vardon, Marco Di Carlo, and Shane Stuart. They've built the site as a way to showcase their talents and meet other designers.

Why do you do a personal site?
Mike Cina: Because you want to share part of yourself with others. The client is left out of the loop. That's always good for exploration and good for the noggin.
Tiffanie Chan: Because no one else out there would do it for you for no money.

Annette Loudon: The whole phenomenon of putting your work out there and then getting feedback from people on the opposite side of the globe still puts a silly grin on my face.

Fernando Costa: Why not? Why not make something that you don't really care about the rules. Whatever you want, nobody to bug you. Go ahead make your own.

Damian Stephens: I am interested in the way digital brands are built. This is a medium where credibility is the currency.

Hawken Bright-Roberts: Selfish reasons really, why else would it exist? I want to tell the world about me, what I do, and let them look at my work. Call it a form of exhibitionism.

Eun-Ha Paek: This is a good way to get people to look at my stories and animations. There's plenty of room for mistakes, and I can just go make something without trying to sell it to someone first.






Dadako
Dadako is the playground of Hawken Bright-Roberts, a London-based designer who works for the Furi Furi Company. He wanted to build a site that was easy to update and allowed him to experiment with large pixel resolutions.

What makes a personal site successful?
Mike Cina: Content. Graphic or textual or both. Talent probably plays a part. If I really liked kitty cats, but had no talent graphically and couldn't write, the site would be weak. You can tell when a person's passion is in what they are doing. You can feel it. This draws me in to look further.
Tiffanie Chan: When people you don't know go and see it and leave you a very nice email about it.

Eric Vardon: Originality. A twist on the mainstream. Doing something shocking that no one has ever seen.

Mat Mejia: if your personal work can spark emotions in viewers causing them to come back time and time again looking for updates, then I'd say you're probably doing something right.

Hawken Bright-Roberts: Content, regularly changing content.

Annette Loudon: The most successful personal sites come from people who are overflowing with ideas and feelings, and they are compelled to share them with the world.






Hungry for Design
A highly original and sometimes bewildering site, Hungry for Design is maintained by Fernando Costa, a native of Rio de Janeiro, who now works as a Senior Designer at Iconologic in Atlanta

What makes a personal site not work so well?
Mike Cina: If they don't really have anything to say, graphically or in text. Also when people copy other people's work. I would rather see someone do original bad work with good ideas.
Damian Stephens: Self-referential, incestuous hyper-linking and self-glorification. Actually, what am I talking about? That's what it's all about!

Tiffanie Chan: Having banner ads on personal sites. It makes it look very cheap. You look like a sellout.

Eun-Ha Paek: If you don't enjoy it, why bother? Chances are, other people won't either.

Annette Loudon: People are getting sick of vacuous eye-candy.

Eric Vardon: Just trying too hard. A lot of people try to design according to how other people do, not the way that they are comfortable.

Mat Mejia: That's the beauty of it, it's totally a matter of your preference.

Hawken Bright-Roberts: Letting your personal site fester, with half finished pages and 'coming soon' text everywhere.






Test Pattern
A mingling of global and local interests makes Test Pattern one of the more unique community sites on the Net. Built by Scott Wenner, the Art Director of Modern Math it combines Minneapolis art news with must-see links from around the world.

How has your personal site helped your career?
Mike Cina: I owe it all to personal sites. They have kept me sane and sharp. My personal work always comes first, if it can't, I take the time to make it happen after. My personal sites have gotten me attention from some awesome companies and I land a lot of clients from my personal work.
Eric Vardon: We couldn't have imagined that we would be receiving the accolades and offers that come in every day.

Tiffanie Chan: Won me an award at graduation, got me my first job and it got ripped off by a someone in a job interview at the same company I work for a year later (how dumb was she?), but I take that as a compliment.

Scott Wenner: I’ve been fortunate enough to make some good connections through it and all that typical blah blah blah that everyone always says. However, I think it’s been more important in an indirect manner as it’s given me a focal point and a newfound work ethic.

Eun-Ha Paek: 90% of my freelance work has been from people seeing my personal work and then being interested enough to go check out the work I've done for clients.

Karen Tannenbaum: I can't say the site has helped my career. But there is an underlying tone that as any type of professional artist you should have a site that exemplifies your work.

Hawken Bright-Roberts:: Not immensely as I've been a Web site designer since the mid nineties.






Prate
Prate is an experimental site maintained by Jemma Gura, who is currently a senior designer at Huge Inc. Its images tell a continually unfolding story about the mysterious Prate brand.

How important do you feel personal work is for a successful designer?
Mike Cina: I think it is the most important thing. Personal work helps develop a designer's use of visual language and helps figure out process. I know some talented people that turn off the computer after work, but it is hard for me to understand. I would guess 95% of the best designers around the globe do more personal work than client work.
Eric Vardon: That's where it all begins. It's like anyone that wants to further their career. You try everything you can to learn and promote yourself.

Mat Mejia: Very important. It's important to keep stimulated, vent from the corporate stuff that pays the bills.

Tiffanie Chan: Not as important as a lot of web designers make it out to be. A good designer should give a 100% to their work, corporate or non-corporate.

Hawken Bright-Roberts: Making something 100% for yourself is crucial to any designer's existence.

Scott Wenner: I think it's the MOST important thing you can do. It's really the only way to grow as a designer.

Eun-Ha Paek: If you don't get a chance to play or experiment very much at your job, then I think it's very important.