Photo: Gary Walters

Redesigning our site was a huge undertaking. Frankly, I never wanted to know much about the inner workings of developing a website—HTML vs. Flash, search engine recognition, etc.—but I was thankful for what I learned in this process. Just writing the brief for our website was like working with a foreign language—I didn’t understand the terminology and frequently misused it. Fortunately, the web people were patient and worked closely with us to ensure we would all be happy with the end result. It was a long, tedious process involving many people—editors, designers, HTML specialists, web developers, and so on. Of course, each person was integral in this process and in the end we got a great website—thanks, team!

In addition to featuring content previously published in STEP, the website will have “extras.” This issue’s extras include footage shot by Hillman Curtis, who shares the back stories behind his “Designer Series” short film documentaries, as well as the process for this issue’s cover design by Volume, featured in Q&A. Curtis’ diary of his film shoots with Stefan Sagmeister, James Victore, Paula Scher, and Milton Glaser addresses the many lessons he learned while working on the documentary series.

Volume cofounders Adam Brodsley and Eric Heiman turn the tables on their Q&A. After reviewing the interview transcript ( John Bielenberg was nice enough to interview these guys), they were astonished at how … umm ... inarticulate they sounded. In fact, they ran the Q&A by some of Bielenberg’s students at Project M, who wholeheartedly agreed. One student even commented, “Will anyone want to read this?” Struck by the painfully honest remarks, Brodsley and Heiman turned their Q&A into a mission to address the mistakes they made and how they would fix them given the opportunity to do it again (which they basically did). It’s a hilarious (and humbling) take on what happens when an interview goes bad.

Jude Stewart logs on with Armin Vit of Speak Up, as well as some other noteworthy design blog founders (Rick Poyner and Michael Bierut of Design Observer and Adrian Hanft and Bennett Holzworth of Be A Design Group) to discuss the complexities of creating blogs that lure designers in. Surprisingly, site design is not an issue. A site’s success depends on the juicy discussions.

The deadline for the STEP 100 Design competition is drawing near—Oct. 3. Entry forms are available on our website. Don’t miss your chance to enter and possibly be included in our Design 100 Annual (March/April 2006). Judges for this year’s competition are John Bielenberg (C2, San Francisco), Dana Lytle (Planet Propaganda, Madison), Terry Marks (Terry Marks Design, Seattle), Jilly Simons (Concrete, Chicago), and DJ Stout (Pentagram, Austin).

I look forward to hearing from readers about our new web presence. The site will be evolving on an ongoing basis, so check back every couple of weeks for updates.