An inspiring article in Smashing Magazine: Design Something Every Day! (even if you are not a designer or photographer, it’s worth to use 10 minutes of your life to read it!).

Lately I noticed that I spend a lot of time in reading all kinds of articles and tutorials about design (Web/graphic/print) and photography, twitter quick links, lists with “the best of…”, etc., instead of trying to create myself a vector illustration, try in practice a new CSS3 technique, or take some great photos — all of this, just for fun, or to improve some of my skills.

I would not deny the importance of reading a lot in a specific field, to check new tutorials, to study the work of other designers, to see long lists of inspiring links (or photos or illustrations), to watch for the latest news in the Web design field (CSS, HTML, AJAX)… But sometimes, this takes away the time that one can use to spend, trying to create something new, on his own — to write a short article/blog post, to shoot something nice and later edit the photo in an intersting way, to quickly sketch some vector illustration, to play with Illustrator/Fireworks/Photoshop, and all sorts of similar things…

In one word: practice is not less important than theory and reading!

Last year, I didn’t manage to finish a lot of the things that I planned to do earlier, at the end of 2008. Some of them, I didn’t manage to finish because of pure laziness; some others, for lack of persistence; others — because I put them away too much or was scattering my efforts, instead of concentrating them in a few specific goals! Thus, the re-design of my own website/blog “traveled” into the distant future; I was writing about Adobe Fireworks much less that I would like to; I didn’t find the time to help @molif with an amazingly good idea about an illustrations’ website; I didn’t publish any tutorials about Web or graphic design (with only one exception); the list is too long, so I’ll stop here…

And because my three-years old blog has more than one reader now (including its Bulgarian language version), it will be much better if I fail in front of all my readers!

So I challenge myself — in the next year, to create/publish every day at least one illustration — could be a vector illustration in Fireworks/Illustrator, or a photo, edited in an interesting way, or a drawing with a tablet (in Adobe Flash or ArtRage)… the important things is that it should happen on a daily basis, and to show it to the world — in illustration/design a day, or die! ;-)

Shall I succeed? I don’t know. But if I become lazy or bored by this, my readers will know first! So it’s maybe worth trying…

Was it done before?

O, yes. And some of the projects became very successful and interesting:

The 365 photography blog by Dustin Diaz
The Daily Monster

To start something new is interesting and funny! And I don’t think that 15 minutes a day will be an obstacle for me to take care of the new design of my blog, to spend my energy in my freelance projects, as well as with all of my other hobbies and new ideas!

So, happy new 365 364 beautiful ugly or strange illustrations in 2010! :-)

PS Because I already missed a day, I will probably publish another illustration later today in the Daily Design category.
PPS I also challenge Ani — do you dare to take the challenge? :)
PPPS (update @ 2009/01/05) Oh, someone else took the challenge, too! ;-) It’s cool not to be alone!