Dribbble Blog

Today we’re fired up to announce a new feature for Pro members. Find Designers is a powerful tool to search for Dribbble members by location, skills, work availability, and more. Location search has been one of the most requested features since we started the site, so we’re thrilled to finally make it available. Being able to wade through the community’s ever-growing talent pool makes discovering and connecting with designers that interest you even easier.

Pro members can start using Find Designers today (just click the new ‘Designers’ tab on the main menu). If you’re a drafted player who hasn’t gone Pro, you can see example results in “Practice Mode” to get a feel for how it works.

We realize that non-players, particularly those looking to hire designers, will also be interested in finding users. We’ll be turning our attention to this crowd in the very near future, so stay tuned.

In addition to search, we’ve added lists of the cities, countries, and skills on Dribbble (accessible from the Find Designers page). This gives, quite literally, the lay of the land of our global community. 

We’ve made skills, previously a Pro-only feature, available to all players and prospects. Any player or prospect can now add skills to their profile from the Account page (Pros: this has moved from your Account/Pro page). We hope this will help with finding more members and drafting prospects.

We’ve discovered many new local designers and globetrotting Dribbblers during development. We hope you Find Designers as much fun as we have.

We have a brand-spanking new t-shirt over at the Dribbble Store!

Available now in Guys and Girls sizes. Wear it with pride, Dribbblers.

We just wanted to send a quick reminder about the first-ever Dribbble Meetup in Boston which is less than a week away. Start time is 7pm Monday, October 17 and our Show & Tell lineup of short talks includes:

• Dan Cederholm with an introduction
• Adam Darowski and Jeffrey Chupp on their Dribbble API web application, Liiikes
• Chris Arvin on bringing Expedia Hotels to the iPad & tablets
• Jeremy Weiskotten and Joe Lind on Sass
• Bruce Spang on using ImageMagick to browse images by color
• Mat Marquis on the responsive (re)design of the Boston Globe
• Rich Thornett on what’s coming soon to Dribbble

There will be pizza, letterpressed coasters, buttons, stickers, and we’ll be raffling t-shirts that feature a brand new design.

After the meetup, we’ll be heading over to The Good Life for drinks and conversation.

Please note: The 1 Financial building where Gemvara’s offices are located has tight security. You MUST be on the attendee list and have a photo ID to get in to the event.

If you can’t attend, please change your RSVP status so someone from the waiting list can. 

We look forward to seeing you on Monday!

Dan & Rich

Timeouts are lightning-quick interviews. Five questions to help you get to know the players holding court at Dribbble. Many thanks to Mary Kate for being today’s interviewee.

Who are you? Let us know where you hail from and what you do.

What are you working on? 

Some historical-type lettering for Lehigh University, fun holiday lettering for Better Homes and Gardens, and my poster for Art Crank.

Choose a favorite shot of yours. Tell us why it’s a favorite. 

I think it would be Cheat Local. It was a fun little project I did for the cover of the Willamette Week, a weekly paper here in Portland. I have a career crush on sign painters so it was fun to experiment with that style.

Tell us about your setup. What tools did you use to create the shot(s)?

My tools include a pencil, micron pens, calligraphy pen, brushes, tracing paper, paper, slate, scanner, photoshop.

From my sketch, I created the lettering using a brush and ink to capture the style of hand painted letters on a sign and scanned it in, added color on the computer and pieced the decorative elements that I also scanned in. 

Here are some peaks into part of my workspace. This is my desk where I will work on sketches, doodles, and where I scan and sometimes piece together work on the computer. I also spend a good amount of time looking at the internet.

The other part of my studio is in our basement where screen printing, building, painting and messy art making goes on.

Choose a favorite shot from another player. Tell us why you dig it.

I have a new favorite on Dribbble just about everyday! But this shot sticks out in my head for sure, Jerk Pix by Dan Cassaro.

I really love anything that makes me laugh and beautiful lettering, which Dan Cassaro is a master at both. I used it for my desktop for about a day but I would really love to see this as a print and on my wall.

Timeouts are lightning-quick interviews. Five questions to help you get to know the players holding court at Dribbble. Many thanks to Riley for being today’s interviewee.

Who are you? Let us know where you hail from and what you do.

I live in the Pacific Northwest of Continental North America.

What are you working on?

I’m almost always working on a couple of branding projects, a personal project, and a display face for my pet project with Tyler Galpin, The Lost Type Co-op.

Choose a favorite shot of yours. Tell us why it’s a favorite.

I had a great time recently designing a t-shirt for a startup called Yardsale. I wanted to make a shirt that appealed to a set of special interest groups, mainly: Foodies, Photographers, Crafters/Sewers, Electronics Hobbyists, Fashionistas, Artists, Bicyclists, Collectors and Music Lovers.

Tell us about your setup. What tools did you use to create the shot(s)?

I work on a 13” Macbook Pro, and I prefer to use a single button mouse, which I understand is somewhat peculiar these days.

I can’t wrap my head around all the buttons and things. I’m sick of triggering exposé every time I wanna throw a bézier :-)

A majority of my work is done in Illustrator, and I use Photoshop for the other bits.

I like scribbling out ideas in any number of Moleskine/Field Notes books I have laying about.

I work at an ikea desk that has this crazy 10 bulb light fixture on it (here’s a photo):

My walls feature a bunch of prints by fellow Dribbble players. Here’s a shot of some Curtis Jinkins (Neighborhood Studios) prints, and a small portion of the Coke bottles I’ve been collecting for years.

Choose a favorite shot from another player. Tell us why you dig it.

Hard to choose! I have enjoyed so much work over the past year or so that I’ve been using dribbble.

Right now, I’m super into this shot by Bobby McKenna:

I love the pattern of those half-circles, and that bold color scheme.

Thanks for having me Dan + Rich, and thanks for keeping Dribbble running so smoothly!

9 days day ago we launched Job Ads on Dribbble. Since that time, we’ve seen:

• 40 job ads posted
• 13,969 click-throughs to view the details of a posted job
• 3,021 signed in users click-through to view a job
• 1,959 players click-through to view a job

We’ve also been thrilled at the caliber of employers who are advertising with us. The credit for attracting this many top-notch jobs, of course, goes to the community. We do our best to keep Dribbble running smoothly, but employers aren’t coming here to find us. This community overfloweth with quality designers and we think the early returns on job ads are testament to that. Cheers and thank you to our members.

Most of the job ads currently running are full-time positions. But Dribbble also has a large number of freelancers, and we’d like to have an offering for them. So today we’re adding a Freelance section. Same simple format, but in a dedicated section at a lower price point. The original jobs page remains the same but is now labeled Full-time.

Job ads are important to both the short-term goal of feeding our kids and our long-term viability and growth. So we’d like to take a moment to give a standing ovation to our members. For your energy, your talent and your contributions to Dribbble, we are truly lucky and grateful to have you. AND THE CROWD GOES WILD.

Dribbble players and fans have been gathering all over the globe—except here in Massachusetts, the league’s home state. We’re going to fix that.

We’re pleased to announce the first official Dribbble Show & Tell Meetup in Boston, hosted by our friends at Terrible Labs at the Gemvara offices near South Station.

Here are the important details:

• Monday October 17th from 7pm-9pm.
• Meet and greet other Dribbblers and local webfolk.
• Pizza will be served. And it will be delicious.
• Swag will be distributed. We’ll also be raffling off a few Dribbble t-shirts sporting a brand new design.
• Show & Tell. We’ll organize some short talks from anyone who’d like to share what they’ve been working on—live. (Let us know if you’re interested in doing a super-quick presentation.)
• Drinks and socialization afterward at The Good Life.

We’re excited to kick off our first area meetup, and can’t wait to see you in person. The event is free, but space is limited to 60 tickets. Be sure to RSVP to reserve your spot.

Dribbble is blessed with a lot of talented designers. Accordingly, we’ve had numerous employers ask to advertise open positions on Dribbble, but never an appropriate format to offer them. We’re happy to change that today.

Our first steps toward connecting designers and employers were the Hire Me button and profile Skills. Today we’re announcing a supply-side solution:

Dribbble Job Ads
http://dribbble.com/jobs

True to our minimalist style, job ads represent the simplest thing that (we hope) could possibly work: A list of links to jobs. Wicked simple to post an ad, scan openings, and click to learn more. Job ads also run in the upper right corner of many prominent pages on the site, further exposing employers to the thousands of designers who spend time on the site every day.

Many moons ago, we wrote a post that outlined a model for a sustainable Dribbble (To Infinity and Beyond). We talked about a dedicated space for promotional offerings that mesh with native behaviors on the site. Backboard is what we’re coining that space and jobs is the first brick in the Backboard. As such, there’s now a top-level Backboard menu under which Jobs is found. We plan to improve jobs and add other Backboard features as we progress. (As always, we’ll be hard at work building and enhancing core site features as well.)

We hope this helps even more Dribbblers find high-quality work. As for employers … if you’re trying to score a designer, use the Backboard!

Timeouts are lightning-quick interviews. Five questions to help you get to know the players holding court at Dribbble. Many thanks to Sean for being today’s interviewee.

Who are you? Let us know where you hail from and what you do.

What are you working on?

I’m never working on just one thing, but right now most of my time is being spent on my wife’s site’s redesign (she’s a slave driver). Happy wife = happy life right?  

Choose a favorite shot of yours. Tell us why it’s a favorite.

I would say that this is my favorite shot that I’ve done.

Most of my work is logo work and this one has always been one of my favorites. The client gave me a lot of free reign and only one concept was needed in the end.

Tell us about your setup. What tools did you use to create the shot(s)?

Well as some of you already know, I actually used to design from my Dippin’ Dots kiosk. Selling ice cream and logos at the same time! However, since then, things have picked up at both places allowing me to work from home… although I’m not sure where I got more work done from. My current set up is an iMac / Macbook Pro / Magic Mouse / Moleskine / #2 Pencil. I don’t have a nook in my apartment so I’m right next to the TV, xbox, couch, etc… I can get distracted quite easily.

Choose a favorite shot from another player. Tell us why you dig it.

Wow, this was hard. I have spent a lot of time curating shots on dribbble (1000+) and organizing them into buckets. Browsing through them for this interview reminded me just how much talent there is on Dribbble. I could have probably picked around 50 that I like equally, but as of this very second I am leaning towards two different ones. This shot by Eric Mortensen:

I love the colors and I’m a sucker for great dog illustrations. It’s got a retro vibe to it, and just love simplistic styling to it.

Even though it’s 90 degrees out in most places, this one, by Bobby McKenna has always been one of my favorites:

Again, just love the simplicity of the illustration and the colors are spot on.

Two weeks ago, we gave Pro members the ability to display their work availability via the Hire Me button. Today, Pros can now add skills to their profile.

If you’re a Pro, head over to the Pro tab in your Account settings and add up to 10 keywords that describe the work you do (e.g. ui, illustration, icon design, lettering, css, etc.). Your skills list will display under your bio on your main profile, giving the community a better sense of what you specialize in.

These skill links don’t go anywhere just yet—but eventually we’ll tie these into searchable, filterable player card lists, adding yet another lens to discover and connect with creatives around the globe.

Timeouts are lightning-quick interviews. Five questions to help you get to know the players holding court at Dribbble. Many thanks to Jacqui for being today’s interviewee.

Who are you? Let us know where you hail from and what you do.

I was born in Canada, but spent my formative years in Bahrain, Zambia, Libya and England which left me with the odd accent I have today. I also teach at OCAD University (Ontario College of Art and Design) in Toronto but I live in Hamilton. If you don’t know, this is the steel city right next to Toronto which is affectionately known as “The Hammer”.

What are you working on?

Just finished a group art show entitled ZOO. It was great to spend the time on larger detailed paintings and collaborate with talented friends. I’m also gearing up to work on my first children’s book. In addition, I’ve been invited to do art for La Carnita, the pop-up art and taco shop in Toronto at the end of September. Anytime I can get free tacos by doing art I’m game.

Choose a favorite shot of yours. Tell us why it’s a favorite.

I guess it would have to be my Lion painting which was the cover art for the Two Crown King album.

I usually get hired to do ‘pretty’ work which is fun but it was enjoyable to do something more intense. I’ve always been into Horror and sci-fi so it’s nice to start bringing some of these influences into my work. I’m also used to working on magazines which can be disposable so working on a product that people will actually hang on to is satisfying. On top of all that, it was also the first time I collaborated with my husband Jamie Lawson from Poly (and amazingly we didn’t kill each other in the process). I was so pleased by the combination of our work.

Tell us about your setup. What tools did you use to create the shot(s)?

I usually collect way too much reference/inspirational material online or in books for my pencil sketches. Then I typically ink my work and paint with good old-fashioned oil or acrylic and elbow grease. I work with layers of paint, dry brushing & ink line-work on textured paper to get an aged feel. I’m a sucker for a ‘vintage’ look. I’m no stranger to the computer though, sometimes I do add colour digitally, but I always tend to enjoy the happy accidents you get when working by hand.

Choose a favorite shot from another player. Tell us why you dig it.

It’s so hard to choose. One would have to be Dushan Milic’s Minotaur piece. He’s always been a great artist but lately his line-work and sense of colour is so sensitive but so quirky & original. This piece illustrates such a weird combination of humour and melancholy, and those lines…!

At the risk of being accused of nepotism I’m going to have to also choose one of Jamie’s pieces, Damn the Torpedoes - panel 3.

This is a massive 72 × 36” piece in acrylic paint and ink. Love how these pieces play with depth & how the layers push & pull against each other. Quite a puzzle to figure out which layer of paint came first. It’s hard not to pick one of his pieces since we’ve been influencing with each other so much this year.

And finally my third pick would be An Object of Beauty by Darren Booth. As you can see from my last pick I’m a sucker for the imperfections of hand-painted lettering. I always love Darren’s script but there was such a beautiful simplicity to this piece that made it really stand out.

Timeouts are lightning-quick interviews. Five questions to help you get to know the players holding court at Dribbble. Many thanks to Glenn for being today’s interviewee.

Who are you? Let us know where you hail from and what you do.

What are you working on?

These days mostly my t-shirt designs for Glennz Tees, mixed with some freelance illustration and brand identity work.

Choose a favorite shot of yours. Tell us why it’s a favorite.

A recent one I like is Empty Cartridge:

I haven’t drawn a squid before and I tried a few different techniques when I was illustrating it. I’m happy with how it came out and the idea seems to work. Nice and simple which always works for me.

Tell us about your setup. What tools did you use to create the shot(s)?

Wacom tablet, Macbook Pro & coffee. I use the pen tool in Adobe Illustrator and draw start to finish on screen. All roughs/concepting is done as I draw.

(Be sure to check out some fascinating time-lapse videos of Glenn’s process. —Coach)

Choose a favorite shot from another player. Tell us why you dig it.

Theres so much good stuff on Dribbble, this one seems to stick though (Royalty speed-shop by Greg Cuellar). I love the simplicity and the clever speedo/crown logo—great idea.

Dribbble has become a fantastic place to discover creative talent, and we’ve long been hearing success stories from Dribbble players who receive a steady stream of work requests via the site. We want to make connections between free agents and talent scouts even easier.

Today we’ve launched a new feature for Pro members, allowing them to indicate if they’re available for hire (this can be set on the Account/Pro page). When available, Dribbble pros have a “Hire Me” button on their profiles, allowing potential clients to contact them via email. Additionally, their player cards display an icon in the top right corner, showing that they’re available for work.

To see it all in action, check out this short screencast about the new feature:

To contact pros available for hire, you must be signed in at Dribbble. This helps employers have an identity in the community and provides members for hire with a measure of protection against spam. That said, starting today, we’ve made it even easier to join Dribbble as a spectator. A Twitter account is no longer required to create an account. Sign up is quick and easy.

On the heels of Player Cards, this is the second release in a progression to make it easier for Dribbble members get discovered and hired. Stay tuned for more.

We’ve introduced a small but fun new feature today: Player Cards. Dribbble is a site about showing your work, so we’ve updated member lists across the site to do the same—they now display a shot (if applicable) for each member in the list, as well as member location and a few stats.

In addition to looking much better than our old lists, we hope this view of users makes it easier to find people of interest by allowing you to see their location and a sample of their work up front. Lists of fans, following/followers, user search results and Player tab pages now feature the new player cards.

If you’re a player on Dribbble, we’ve pre-selected a shot for your player card (which is always visible in your Account settings), but you can update the card at any time by following the “Use for player card” link on any of your shots.

This release is also the first in a larger effort to help creatives on Dribbble get found more easily—and hired. Much more on that in the future. We’re excited to get the ball rolling in this direction, so head over and update your card. If only we could include a stick of bubblegum with each one.

Timeouts are lightning-quick interviews. Five questions to help you get to know the players holding court at Dribbble. Many thanks to Dana for being today’s interviewee.

Who are you? Let us know where you hail from and what you do.

What are you working on?

Right now, I’m having fun working on the second out of four wine labels for Nagging Doubt wines. I’m also currently working on a couple of shirt designs for Adidas.

Choose a favorite shot of yours. Tell us why it’s a favorite.

I’ll choose my Specials of the Month shot which was a section opener for EveryDay with Rachael Ray magazine.

I guess it’s my favorite since it was the first published piece that my Grandma in Texas could go buy at her local grocery store!

Tell us about your setup. What tools did you use to create the shot(s)?

My setup is pretty simple, really. When I’m not doing an installation on-location, I just work from home. I’m always sketching on tracing paper with plain old #2 pencils—nothing too fancy there.

Other than that, I use white chalk from the dollar store, old rags, a step stool, and a flexible sewing tape measure. I have a large chalk wall at home that I typically draw on, though I often use large masonite boards for projects that require colored chalkboard paint. Or if I have more than one job going on at a time.

Choose a favorite shot from another player. Tell us why you dig it.

My favorite shot is Simon Walker’s Gold Top Bottle Comps.

Truth be told, I am a huge fan of Simon’s work (and not just because he’s a fellow Texan!). His type work is always spot on—simple lines and shapes; well-balanced with little surprises if you look close enough. His work stands out among all of the mid-century textured stuff that is out there because of its economy. I love this shot of the two bottles because the design is beautiful and it’s also a photo of an actual, tangible product. It shows two labels that are quite different in color and type style, but that still work so well as individual options

Timeouts are lightning-quick interviews. Five questions to help you get to know the players holding court at Dribbble. Many thanks to Evan for being today’s interviewee.

Who are you? Let us know where you hail from and what you do.

What are you working on?

I’m working on a number of different projects at the moment. I’m wrapping up my Invitation to an Assassination series as I prepare for the launch of the Momentus Project. Both are side projects of mine that keep me busy when out of the office, and satisfy my weird history fetish.

Most of my client work is confidential, but I’m happy to announce that we’ve been making progress on a new Planet Propaganda website. Long overdue since the current site is from like, 2001 as I understand it. We plan on rolling it out sometime this summer.

Choose a favorite shot of yours. Tell us why it’s a favorite.

It’s so hard to choose, they’re all really amazing. (Only kidding…sorta.) Gun to my head, I’d have to say Timeline:

I’m not what you would call an interactive designer, but I was ecstatic when I arrived at this solution for sorting through the life’s work of jazz legend Ben Sidran on his new website that we’re currently still working on at Planet. It was my first real stab at something highly interactive, and was happy to see that it was well-received both by the Dribbble community and Ben Sidran himself.

Tell us about your setup. What tools did you use to create the shot(s)?

I recently upgraded to a new adult-sized desk. Previously I had been working on the same desk I’ve had since the second grade, so it’s nice to finally have something I can fit my legs under. It’s imperative that I keep my desk free of clutter and distractions. Just the necessities…and dust.

My main machine is a 24” iMac. I used to have a MacBook Pro I got back in high school, but the logic board fried so I’m thinking of getting a new one. Maybe even a MacBook Air. Most of my shots are created with Illustrator, Photoshop (or a combination of both), or Fireworks. Sometimes I’ll do some work by hand and scan it in. Beyond the Creative Suite, Dropbox is my most prized application.

Choose a favorite shot from another player. Tell us why you dig it.

Okay, seriously? Now this is a toughie. I’m fortunate enough to follow some of the most amazing designers in this community, but there is one particular shot that I keep going back to, and it’s by Jacqui Oakley:

It’s one of those pieces that you can’t quite put into words, so I won’t even try. It honestly leaves me speechless. Not sure if it’s the colors, the attention to detail, or just the Gestalt of it all, but it’s easily one of my favorites.

Timeouts are lightning-quick interviews. Five questions to help you get to know the players holding court at Dribbble. Many thanks to Sarah for being today’s interviewee.

Who are you? Let us know where you hail from and what you do.

I’ve got a double major in design and media studies, so I’m a lover of all forms of media—especially horror movies, the Internet and the Kardashians. Oh yeah, and I’m a connoisseur of mexican food, vodka/soda/lemon, and dancing (but only after the previous).

What are you working on?

Aside from MetaLab work, I’m in the process of completing a limited run poster series with Christopher Paul for the band Death Cab for Cutie. We’ve got a poster inspired by each of the songs on their new CD. They’ll be released by the label one week at a time and given as prize merch to the band’s fans.

I’m also working on a major redo of my personal website. www.sarahmick.com is in the works and nearly complete.

Lastly, Christopher and I are brewing up a freelance combo for picking up projects like the posters I mentioned above under the name The Art Dept. Website will be launching in the next month!

Choose a favorite shot of yours. Tell us why it’s a favorite.

There are two that are variations of each other:

They’re both Tumblr themes for Pixel Union, and I like them because they showcase my favorite style to work with. I love texture, soft colors, and traditionally feminine stylings. I’m also into colors that are muted and tend to vibrate with eachother. 

Tell us about your setup. What tools did you use to create the shot(s)?

I’ve got a super mobile setup right now, because I don’t have a studio space at the moment. My coffee table is my desk and NPR or X-Files are the soundtrack of my work-life.

I just upgraded to a 15” quad core MacBook Pro, and I’ve got plans to grab a 27” monitor pretty soon. Other than that, it’s all about sketching on paper, digitizing with the Wacom, and quite often, muddling through with the laptop trackpad.

Choose a favorite shot from another player. Tell us why you dig it.

This is nearly impossible! :)

I adore this older shot by Scott Hill:

Love the muted pink, silhouette, sort of antique vibe. Looks a bit different than his more recent stuff. I would say that most of his stuff blows my mind.

I also die for this shot from Friends of Type:

Lastly, one of my most recent UI favs because of its soft, textured look while maintaining the “traditional” web-y elements (by zee7):

One of our focal points at Dribbble is helping you discover interesting shots. Toward that end, we launched Buckets last week. Today we’re happy to release Colors.

You can now search for shots by color. Just head over to the color search page (accessible via the Explore menu). There are color swatches at the top. We tried to provide broad coverage, but the swatch results are far from exhaustive coverage of all shots on Dribbble.

The color picker on the right allows you to select your own hex code and get as broad or precise as you like. There are two sliders for adjusting results:

Color variance widens or narrows the range of color used to search. A higher variance tends to produce more, but less precise, results. Results at a lower variance will be closer to the selected hex code, though fewer in number.

Color minimum specifies the minimum percent of a shot that contains colors in the selected range. For example, searching green with a color minimum of 50% returns only shots that are half green.

If you’re confused by these definitions (we had a hard time writing them :), play around a bit. See how changes to the sliders affect your results; it’s probably the best way to learn. You should be able to use them to get very precise results when needed.

Our color database is generated from the shot images themselves by quantizing (reducing) all colors in a shot to a set of (up to) eight. The quantized colors for a given shot are displayed on its details page. Each color is linked to color search, so you can click on any color to search for other shots in the same color range.

While testing colors, we’ve found many new people and shots that we love, so we’re thrilled to open it to the public. Color us excited!

There’s an amazing variety of shots uploaded on Dribbble every day, and it’s our continual challenge to make it easier to discover new and interesting content. Today we’ve launched Buckets to help the community participate in curating Dribbble.

Buckets are simply collections of shots that any Dribbble member can create. We think they will be a handy way to organize the great work you’re finding into helpful sets that you can return to later. We also hope that browsing each other’s buckets (whoops, that sounds naughty) will be a valuable lens through which to discover work on Dribbble that’s of interest to you.

So go forth and bucket! This feature is available to all members and you can create as many as you’d like. We’re excited to see what you find.

For the past year, we’ve sold our own advertising on Dribbble. It put food on the table as we became a company, was a tremendous learning experience, and allowed us to work with some fantastic, like-minded companies, helping them gain exposure in front of the community. But it was also a tremendous amount of work. Our tiny team would prefer to focus on efforts that directly affect the app and the community.

Toward that end, we’re pleased to announce that starting June 1, Dribbble will be joining The Deck: the premiere ad network of creative, web and design culture. This will free us up to focus on Dribbble itself, while still serving high-quality, relevant ads to the community. Going forward, if you’d like to advertise on Dribbble, contact the friendly folks over at The Deck. Your ad will also appear on dozens of other wonderful sites.

We’d also like to take this opportunity to sincerely thank anyone who’s ever advertised on Dribbble. It’s because of you that we’ve been able to bootstrap Dribbble and continue to grow the community. We will forever be grateful for that.

Wanted to note that we made a fix to our Pro stats for 30-day counts of shot views. Due to a bug in our SQL, we’ve been omitting views/clicks that come from anonymous (non-Dribbble) users in these counts. Thus we’ve been underreporting the 30-day shot views numbers. (By how much depends on what percentage of a user’s views/clicks come from Dribbblers.)

We’ve made the fix and re-aggregated these stats. So if you notice an increase in the numbers, that’s why.

We sincerely apologize for the error.

Many thanks to Alden Haley (http://dribbble.com/aldenhaley) for reporting the bug so we could fix it.

We’re super excited today to announce the release of Dribbble Pro, a suite of extra features for existing players for just $19 USD per year.

In an earlier blog post, we outlined a roadmap for the future, noting that our next challenge was sustainability—adding revenue to keep up with the growth of the site. Dribbble Pro is our first step in that direction. We’ve left the core Dribbble experience free, while adding some powerful new functionality for those who’d like to get more out of the site and support our efforts to maintain the community.

To see the new Pro features in action, check out the screencast below. The short version is:

• Projects. Organize your shots into projects to tell the story and show the progression of your work.
• Advanced Stats. Keep track of your popular shots, traffic, clicks and fans—all in one spot.
• Attachments. Upload full-size images, PSDs, .zips, etc with your shots to provide greater detail.
• Pro Badge. Show your support for the community. We also won’t show ads on your main profile page.

If you’re a Dribbble player, head over to your Account and look for the Pro tab for details and sign up. We can’t wait to see how the community takes advantage of the new features!

As for prospects, we hope that revenue generated by Pro accounts will allow us to accelerate our efforts to evolve gracefully and accommodate more players - thank you for bearing with our growing pains.

Pro or no, we want to close by saying thanks to the entire Dribbble community. Your work and your support continue to be astonishing.

Timeouts are lightning-quick interviews. Five questions to help you get to know the players holding court at Dribbble. Many thanks to Trent for being this week’s interviewee.

Who are you? Let us know where you hail from and what you do.

What are you working on?

We just launched a new site for The Do Lectures, working alongside Frank Chimero, Jon Heslop, and the rest of The Do Lectures Team. Being a part of this redesign was a privilege. They’ve got some great content, trusted our vision, and let us run wild with media queries.

We’ve also got a few in-house projects cooking. Goodfoot, a Gowalla-powered companion iPhone app, is open for beta testers, and the next The Many Faces Of subject has been nailed down.

Choose a favorite shot of yours. Tell us why it’s a favorite.

I think it’d have to be Ford—the first in my car logo/badge series. When projects we work on tend to span months, it’s nice to sit down and hammer something out as a quick exercise. I take advantage of Dribbble in that way. It can be a nice outlet in and of itself.

Tell us about your setup. What tools did you use to create the shot(s)?

I just upgraded! I moved from a 15” MacBook Pro to a 27” iMac and a 13” MacBook Air, both with solid state drives. No more waiting on anything when I save for web, or anything else for that matter. I use Dropbox to share files between the two machines, and with the rest of the Paravel team. Oh, and the biggest upgrade of all would be represented by the baby monitor next to the mouse. I’ve got a 10 week old son, and am loving life.

My workflow for the Ford shot is pretty typical. I sourced a photo from a 1954 Mainline, created the lettering in Illustrator, and brought it into Photoshop for texture. Next to Coda and CSS Edit, Photoshop is where I spend most of my time.

Choose a favorite shot from another player. Tell us why you dig it.

Sorry, I’ve got 3. I can’t help myself.  Firstly, I’ll have to go back to January 2010 and cite something that I’d never even know how to begin to create. John Neiner’s Dreams In The Night writes its own story, and does way more with it’s pixel-space than any other shot I’ve seen.

Another would have to be ‘Lane Final’, yet another of Anthony Lane’s sturdy shots.

“Drawn with Sharpie, scanned, printed, re-drawn with Sharpie, scanned into and finally fleshed out in AI with live-trace and additional tweaking.”

What more could you possibly want? :)

And I’ll take Reagan Ray’s TMFO Logo as my sentimental third.

We were just getting our feet wet on The Many Faces Of there. What an exciting time.

Timeouts are lightning-quick interviews. Five questions to help you get to know the players holding court at Dribbble. We’ll be featuring a different player on a (hopefully) regular basis here on the blog. Many thanks to Rogie (pronounced RAH-GEE just FYI) for being the inaugural interviewee.

Who are you? Let us know where you hail from and what you do.

I’m a former Math/Computer Science double major with hopes to be a video game developer, with previous hopes to be a Disney animator, turned designer, illustrator and front end coder. I love what I do and you can find me frolicking around the internet, mostly on Dribbble and Twitter (@rogie).

What are you working on?

I’m wrapping up a long-time-coming redesign of Mad Mimi, dubbed “Mimi 2” that is not only an overhaul of their front-end site, but almost every tool in the system.

I’m also working on finishing up icon sets for my upcoming store, Fine Goods, a Mac OS X app for Flexibits and practicing my hand at becoming a better illustrator, which was a childhood dream of mine.

Choose a favorite shot of yours. Tell us why it’s a favorite.

That would have to be “Filled Again” — for many reasons. I designed it as therapy during a hard time last year, where my mother was going through a really rough season. Design (illustration especially) is great therapy for me.

This shot represents parts of my life in its reference to video games (Zelda heart piece) and my desire to be filled with God’s holy spirit at all times. It’s also a hail back to the style that I used when I first started illustrating with a computer for my website, Komodo Media.

Tell us about your setup. What tools did you use to create the shot(s)?

My setup is pretty simple. 15” MacBook Pro, 24” Apple LED Monitor, Logitech MX Revolution Mouse, Big ‘ol fat Logitech G35 Headset (noise block for the kids ;)

I work solely in Adobe Fireworks CS5, with a side of elbow grease and an obsession for pixel perfection: hopefully one day I’ll get those dang pixels perfect :) For illustrations, I sketch, then scan, then rework the illustration with vectors. I’m slowly getting into Illustrator more and more.

Choose a favorite shot from another player. Tell us why you dig it.

My gosh. I literally spent two hours from midnight to 2am to go through over 3K of my favorites. First of all, I battled between the Steinway Metronome App by Jesse Bennett-Chamberlain and the the Captain Crunch illustration by Matt Kaufenberg, but for the #1 spot, I’m gonna give it to Matt.

Matt’s illustrations are so incredibly rich, gorgeous and full of character. To me, more than a perfectly executed user interface or pixel perfect icons, character is the most important part of anything (to me personally). Of course, being usable, being a good design to solve a problem, etc are all needed.

But Matt’s illustrations make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. They make me smile a huge grin. Every time I see his work, I want to become a better illustrator. Cheers Matt. You inspire me.

April 1st is just around the corner and we have some limited space still available for advertising. Our traffic and community continue to grow (12M+ impressions served last month) and with prices starting at $295 for a monthly spot, it’s a fantastic way to promote your business to our vibrant creative community. Visit dribbble.com/site/advertise or contact [at] dribbble dot com for more info.

Astute dribbblers may have noticed a few subtle updates to the UI that went live over the weekend. While on the surface the changes might seem tiny or easily unnoticed, the release had a gigantic amount under the covers that we’re currently testing privately. This will pave the way for an exciting announcement soonish.

One notable feature that’s up and running for everyone right now is the addition of a bio. Dribbble members can add a short description about who they are in their account settings. This will show up on their profiles. So do tell us about yourselves!

We’d like to issue some invitations this month! Before doing so, it’s worth noting a small change to the way invitations work. We’ve added an expiration date to invitations (currently 30 days from the date an invitation is sent). Once an invitation has expired, it can no longer be used to sign up and will be restored to the sender.

One of our most common requests is from folks who would like to give unclaimed invitations to someone else. While we don’t want invitations to be rescinded without notice, we hope that having an expiration date will provide a graceful way to let members put unused invitations to good use.

Toward that end: In one week (March 10), we’re going to start expiring any invitations that are over 30 days old. As always, you can see the status of all your invitations on the Account / Invitations page.

We wanted to take a moment to talk about our road map for the future. But first, a little history …

When we started this endeavor as a side project, we thought Dribbble might hold interest to a small niche community. Upon emerging from our beta 8 months ago, we (and our servers) were floored by the response. The niche was bigger than we thought. We quickly saw potential to create something significant, and perhaps even make a living doing it. The Dream! The timing was right (or as right as it would ever be with families involved), so Rich came on board full-time. We didn’t have enough revenue for the long haul, but hoped we could survive on ads and savings as we attempted to evolve Dribbble from hobby to business.

We’ve covered a lot of ground since then: Debuts, an API, Highlights, Playoffs and contests, vanity urls, Sign in with Twitter, Spectators, and countless incremental improvements. Behind the scenes, we’ve also sunk a lot of time into scaling and infrastructure, marketing, management and recruitment of advertisers, and user support.

Over the next few months, we’re concentrating on sustainability. We want Dan to come on full-time. We want Rich to make a full salary. We want to spend less time surviving and more time on features. We want to buy ourselves the breathing room and resources to do Dribbble justice.

How? Based on popular demand from members, fans and employers, we’ll offer Pro features for those who want their work to get more exposure.

We get countless reports via blog, Twitter, email and word of mouth that Dribbblers are getting discovered and hired via the site. This one is an interesting read:

http://justcreativedesign.com/2010/10/21/how-i-got-a-job-using-dribbble

We’re making the process even easier. Dribbblers for hire will be able to announce their availability and expertise, be found by location, and have a simple mechanism for being contacted.

We’re also creating a back channel (perhaps a Backboard) where Dribbblers can

Find great jobs

•  http://dribbble.com/shots/58060-H-FJ-is-hiring
•  http://dribbble.com/shots/64906-Work-at-Kickstarter
•  http://dribbble.com/shots/52395-Gowalla-is-hiring
•  http://dribbble.com/shots/46672-Work-with-Squared-Eye

and promote their …

Icons

• http://dribbble.com/shots/27458-Sweet-Social-Media-Icons
• http://dribbble.com/shots/77356-Icons-for-you
• http://dribbble.com/shots/97594-Twitterrific-for-Mac-Icons
• http://dribbble.com/shots/84889-Symbolicons-Update-Sneak-Peek

Fonts

• http://dribbble.com/shots/41807-Caballeros
• http://dribbble.com/shots/76982-Matchbook-font
• http://dribbble.com/shots/27698-Dekar-Free-font
• http://dribbble.com/chank

Prints

• http://dribbble.com/shots/44046-City-Set
• http://dribbble.com/shots/18865-Rhino-Printed
• http://dribbble.com/shots/31321-Chaos-Prints 

iOS apps

• http://dribbble.com/shots/97514-Tea-for-iOS-UI
• http://dribbble.com/shots/99416-New-Categories
• http://dribbble.com/shots/98066-Target-iOS-App-Icon
• http://dribbble.com/shots/60524-I-love-mobile-design-iPhone-iOS-app-interface-UI-UX

Games

• http://dribbble.com/shots/82862-Mini-Vacui-2
•  http://dribbble.com/shots/70372-Jacques-the-Astronut
• http://dribbble.com/shots/39487-Bzoonkbar-Game-Screen
• http://dribbble.com/shots/76730-Game-Map

Software

• http://dribbble.com/shots/14379-Profile
• http://dribbble.com/shots/6973-Passport
• http://dribbble.com/shots/82773-Mountee-Icon
• http://dribbble.com/shots/85379-Verifying

Conferences

• http://dribbble.com/shots/11279-jQuery-Conference-Site
• http://dribbble.com/shots/58800-Future-of-Web-Apps
• http://dribbble.com/shots/54570-Valio-Con-2011
• http://dribbble.com/shots/76519-220-Conferences-Site

As you can see, members have used the site creatively to show their wares. We’re creating a dedicated space for those who want a more targeted spotlight. We will not upset the core Dribbble experience. Dribbble will continue to look and work as it does today and it won’t cost a thing.

We mention all of this because the tweets, emails and other requests for support, features, API additions, etc have reached a fever pitch. This is great - we know we’re on to something. But in order to meet the demand, we need stability, resources and the luxury of being able to focus on progress. Sustainability.

We’ll definitely be fixing bugs and squeezing in core improvements along the way. But if we don’t expand the API or get to your favorite feature request for a while, it’s not because we don’t want to. We’re laying the groundwork for Dribbble to endure.

We hope we’ve earned your confidence that what we’re building is a tasteful addition to the current site. But the proof is in the pudding. So it’s time to go make the pudding. Perhaps we’ll even share some screenshots of our progress along the way. If only there were a site for that …

Social media star and dribbler (only two b’s?!) Shaquille O’Neal informs us as @the_real_shaq that he’s very “quotatious.” (His word—note the quotatious marks.) Following in his giant footsteps, Dribbble will soon be very … Spectatious.

We’ll be opening up the site in waves to anyone with a Twitter account who wants to follow the action more closely: Spectators.

The two most common questions we receive at Dribbble HQ are:

1. I don’t want to post shots, but how can I follow my favorite players and like/bookmark their shots?
2. I want to be a player, but I don’t know anyone with an invitation. How do I get drafted?

Admittedly, we haven’t had great answers to these queries. There is more work to do and fine lines between openness and focus to walk, but we hope that our answers are improving. Here’s a glimpse at how spectators will change the game …

1. For those who want to watch and cheer:

   Anyone with a Twitter account will be able to sign up as a spectator and do just that—follow their favorite players and like their favorite shots. You’ll have courtside seats to watch the creative web being built by the best players in the game.

2. For those who want to be a player:

   After signing up as a spectator, if you want to post shots you can declare yourself eligible for the draft by becoming a Prospect (in your account settings). Those who do will appear on a list of prospects along with their web sites. We hope this assists by providing a central place where members with invitations can browse prospective players and draft them with the click of a button. Prospects will be ordered by follower count, so if you don’t have invitations but would like to see someone become a Player, be sure to follow them. This serves as a voucher/recommendation to the community on behalf of the prospect. And you’ll be following them if and when they do get drafted!

We’ll be welcoming spectators in waves, i.e. we’ll open sign up for a bit, take stock and address any bugs or issues that arise, and repeat. We’ve done a lot of planning and preparation, but we also know there will be bumps in the road—this is a big change for Dribbble. Adding spectators in waves will also help us scale as we grow the user base by perhaps an order of magnitude. (Or two?) We know that many of you have waited for a LONG time to sign up, but please remember—we’re very small and on a tight budget. Hardware and storage is relatively cheap in this day and age; but we’re bootstrapping a sizable and active community, so it’s still pricey for us. We’ll do our best, but please be patient as we react to growth.

Our hope is that spectator sign up will be permanently open to anyone. Demand, issues of community and scale and, of course, the basketball gods will determine how long it takes us to get there.

Heads up players: With many new followers entering the community, remember you can toggle email notifications in your account settings.

Welcome, spectators! We’re eager to usher you into the arena. Look for us to open the gates to spectator sign up very … soonish.

With 161 rebounds in just 1 hour, the Holiday Happy Hour was a wonderful, wild event. Thanks very much to all who entered, voted and cheered.

Congrats to the top 3 finishers!

• The Official Snoman Kit™ by Bobby McKenna
• A Scientific Examination of Extraordinary Proportions by Tyler Galpin
• Snowflake Shrug by Matthew Braun

… and to the Coaches’ Pick!

• Snowflake Mess by Riley Cran

As usual, the creativity of the Dribbble community astounds. Should we do it again soon?

We are now booking ads for January, February and March of 2011. There is a 10% discount for booking all three months up front.

We’ve revisited our advertising offerings and created more, smaller traffic blocks to open up additional slots. We’ve also added a new type of ad that runs for one week at the top of our most popular pages, which is great for promotions and product releases.

Learn more about the new prices and types of ads: http://dribbble.com/site/advertise

Whether your ad appears on Dribbble on not, have a very happy 2011!

With the holidays fast approaching, we’d thought it’d be fun to run a special rebound playoff to celebrate the joyous season of egg nog and pixeltoe. Given a simple theme and a one hour time limit, how creative can you be?

On Thursday, December 16th, we’ll be hosting Holiday Happy Hour! At 2pm EST sharp, we’ll upload a shot containing a simple holiday theme (from the Dribbble player account—so follow us :). Dribbble players will have ONE HOUR to rebound the shot, with the buzzer sounding at 3pm. Use the Like button to vote for your favorite rebounds and we’ll tally likes for contest purposes through 2pm EST on Friday December 17th, with the winners announced shortly thereafter.

The 1st, 2nd and 3rd place winners will each receive:

• Dribbble t-shirt
• Signed copies of CSS3 For Web Designers and Handcrafted CSS
• Issues No.1 & No.2 of the fabulous Ferocious Quarterly (a curated publication that collects illustrators, graphic artists, short fiction authors and written text)
• 1 Symbolicons Bundle License (349 royalty-free vector icons)
• The Fusion Ads Holiday Bundle (13 apps, icons & much more—a $626 value)

In addition, we’ll award those same prizes to the “Coaches Pick” that we select from the remaining entries. 

The 1st place winner will also receive a one-year Developer Club Membership to UpThemes (valued at $387).

Thanks very much to our wonderful sponsor, Iceland wants to be your friend for presenting this special, wintry contest.

Players! See you on the court next Thursday, and best of luck against the clock.

Coach Dan & Coach Rich

As the buzzer sounds and the popcorn is swept up from the aisles, we look back upon the amazing week-long Veer Rebound Playoff. Riffing on three b’s from Alejandro Paul’s Fan Script, Dribbble players rebounded with their own takes and a pool of 10 incredible finalists was chosen by the community.

Like other playoffs before it, this one showcased the tremendous creativity that fuels Dribbble on a daily basis. It’s fascinating to see how each player’s unique style played into an interpretation of Ale’s b’s.

Veer promised to choose one of the 10 finalists as the Veer MVP, winning one of everything in the Veer merch store. Their panel of judges selected Dave Mott’s “And the band played on…”.

From the Veer blog:

And the winner is, Dave Mott, whose entry hit all the right notes with the judges. We loved Dave’s ingenious use of the Fan Script bbb characters, and how the marching band trumpeter matches the sports theme that both Dribbble and Fan Script share.

Congratulations, Dave, on a brilliant playoff run!

A special shout-out goes to the most-liked shot of the playoff, Ryan Putnam’s incredibly-detailed “Ticket Stub”. Ryan’s shot now holds the honor of earning more likes than any other in Dribbble history.

Thank you to all who entered and voted, and special thanks to Veer for sponsoring!

Dribbble has always had a healthy balance of work and play, and the rebound feature has fueled some amazing creativity. Take a look at a few of the past rebound playoffs to get a sense of how amazing this community is.

In order to foster and give more visibility to rebound exchanges, iteration from multiple players and playoffs themselves, we’ve just added a brand new Playoffs tab that’ll collect recent playoffs and their associated rebounds.

In celebration of the unveiling of this new tab, we’re also announcing an incredible featured playoff in association with our friends at Veer. The Veer Rebound Playoff kicked off at 2pm today, and for the next week Dribbble players can rebound their way to fabulous prizes. The Veer MVP (chosen from the 10 finalists) will win one of everything from the Veer merch store. Yes, you read that right. This is the Big Game, folks.

Voting ends on Wednesday, October 13th, at 2pm EST and the winners will be announced later that afternoon. Time to lace up those high-tops and show the world what you got.

The beauty of a vibrant social network, even one like Dribbble that is built on a few simple concepts, is relationships. Quickly, a rich body of information emerges about objects we value and company we keep. Here at Dribbble HQ, we’ve brainstormed about numerous initiatives for exploration of our social graph. We suspect that much of our long-run future lies here. But in the present, our to-do list overwhelms.

Instead of delaying adventures into the social strata indefinitely, we’re opening up the players’ association data to the community. The following information about a player is now available:

• followers
• [those a player is] following
• draftees
• drafted_by_player_id (id of player who drafted) is now an attribute of player

Descriptions of these operations (and all other API information) can be found in the Dribbble API documentation.

Also, please note that you can follow updates to the Dribbble API on Twitter.

We hope you catch the bug to study the viral nature of player relations. We think they’re facet-nating. (Booooo.)

Posted by Rich

Just over a week ago, we published the first draft of the Dribbble API. But it seems like much longer, given the avalanche of API-related inquiries, shots, apps, sites and other creations in this short period.

Players and other interested parties have been requesting an API from Dribbble’s [yes, I’m going there] Inception. (They asked during the beta; the beta beta; the beta beta beta; ok, the top has long stopped spinning on this joke.) We’ve always been excited about the prospect of having an API, but dragged our feet on it for a while, as it comes with risks.

Releasing an API marks the progression of an application from web site to PLATFORM. Even without the caps, it’s a scary transition. Ease of access to your data is accompanied by potential for abuse, new and more difficult-to-predict scaling issues, loss of control over the presentation of your content, the need to define guidelines for usage, etc. It’s a big leap.

It also presents business challenges: If folks start viewing Dribbble through other lenses (iPhone, iPad, etc), are we cannibalizing our own advertising revenue? How do our nascent efforts toward a sustainable Dribbble (revenue) fit in this new paradigm?

We thought long and hard about all these issues, read all the research and came up with a comprehensive 5-year plan for our business. Wait, that was in the dream. What we actually did was add another server, set some rate limits and take the red pill. (Whoops, wrong movie.)

We’re not sure how many levels deep the API is going to take us. And we don’t know what it means for our current reality. Nonetheless, the seed has been planted. APInception. We can’t wait to see what you dream up.

Posted by Rich

We recently changed our ad pricing and are now booking ads for July. Details can be found here:

http://dribbble.com/site/advertise

We tinkered with prices and traffic blocks in hopes of increasing appeal to smaller businesses, particularly those that want to experiment at a lower price point to see if their ads on Dribbble are effective. In addition to the new prices, here are some known knowns:

• Dribbble has high volume traffic and is growing; we’ve already served more ad impressions in June (2,791,170 through the 23rd) than May (2,567,313) with still 7 days remaining in the month.
• Dribbble has high quality traffic; a ridiculously talented, savvy audience of designers and other web professionals frequent the site.

With our growth, audience and new prices, we think advertising on Dribbble is a slam dunk. At $250, it’s now easy to find out for yourself.

- Posted by Rich

It’s been too long since we’ve posted what *we* are working on. Here are some highlights from the last 3 weeks:

• Improvements in our deployment infrastructure. Only time will tell how @gruber-proof we are, but we’ve added capacity and our servers are running cool despite increased traffic. To inifinity and beyond?! Still working on it, but we’re in a much better place than we were a month ago.
• Comments are commendable. You can like comments to show appreciation for feedback, humor, etc. We have further plans to draw attention to good comments and the players who make them, but merely adding likes for comments gives us a corpus of data from which to begin the work of highlighting those worthy of, um, comment.
• Follow up comments now appear in the incoming activity stream. Many people asked us for the ability to be alerted to comments following their own so they’d be able to keep track of discussions. Our first step to address this was to add follow up comments to the incoming activity stream. (In case you didn’t know, there is an RSS feed for this stream; it is arguably the best way to keep abreast of everything happening in your Dribbblesphere.) This has been well received by some, less so by others. We realize that the volume and utility of this feature varies by user. We wanted to push it in its simplest form and get a sense of usage; we’ll be refining it so you can customize to taste going forward.
• Notifications (tab under the Account page). You can now sign up to receive email notifications for certain events at Dribbble. The first set of events are 1) a comment on one of your shots and 2) being followed. We’ll be adding more going forward. Notification of likes and follow up comments are likely candidates to go next.
• Simpler login. We used to get a surprising (at least to me) number of requests for help logging in. Usually the issue was that someone created a login containing capital letters (damn you, iPhone) and tried to login using all lowercase. A postgres function and index later, login is now case-insensitive. Additionally, you can login using your email address (also case-insensitive). Hopefully this marks the end of login difficulties. So say we all.

Upcoming? This week we’re working on refactorings and performance improvements. We have a mountainous backlog of annoyances and enhancements to plow through. We know that folks are salivating - dare I say dribbbling - for an API. We have the unsavory business of making money so I don’t have to get a real job. And we have BIG NEW SECRET STUFF in the early stages of development. We’ll post a few shots along the way … if we can find a good site for that sort of thing.

- Posted by Rich

Dribbble began way back in 2008 as a little side project between two Salem, MA neighbors whose kids played together. As luck would have it, Dan and I happened to be web enthusiasts with complementary skills. We both had jobs and kids, and then we had two kids, so time to work on our idea was scarce. Progress was slow. But always enjoyable.

In 2009, we decided we had built enough to invite some folks to try it out and see if the idea of sharing small screenshots of design work resonated. People came, and though the number of users was small, the content was dazzling. (For proof, check out the inimitable Shaun Inman and the progression of his game, Mimeo, that has captivated Dribbblers for the past 6 months.) It wasn’t long before we realized that the designers who had assembled in Dribbble were producing something special: A sparkling, real-time window of the web as it was being rendered.

We grew our membership slowly to preserve the quality of our content and community. But also, frankly, to keep the site manageable given constraints on our time. As Dribbble drew more users, shots and attention, we were thrilled. The list of features and possibilities for the community began to seem endless; simultaneously, our flaws became more noticeable and irritating. Though a labor of love, there just wasn’t much spare time in our lives to work on Dribbble.

Recently, circumstances changed - my son was in school longer, my baby daughter was now a toddler and my wife was offered a full-time, work-at-home writing job (after years of staying home with the kids). We saw opportunities on many fronts - career, lifestyle, independence. And Dribbble. We decided to take a risk. I left my job and, on Monday, became the first full-time employee at Dribbble.

It wasn’t an easy decision. I had been working for the last 3 years at PatientsLikeMe where they are - for real, not in press releases - changing the future of health care. I am forever indebted to them for giving me an opportunity to work on something truly meaningful and great. If you’re a software developer in the Boston area and want to use Ruby on Rails to build software that has significant impact on people’s lives, I hope you’ll consider working at PatientsLikeMe which is looking for Experienced Ruby on Rails Developers.

As for Dribbble, what does the change mean? Engineering resources have been our primary bottleneck, so we’ll be able to ramp up the time we spend improving Dribbble by a factor of ~10. We have hundreds of ideas to improve the site and suddenly more time to advance them. Here are some highlights of what we’ll be doing in the near future:

• Publishing the first portion of the Dribbble API.
• Growing the community. We’ll be issuing another round of invitations soon. We’re still obsessed with the quality of our content and community, but we have more time to invest in monitoring growth and releasing features to help the community manage itself. We’re long overdue for an expansion and now in a better position to manage it.
• Fixing bugs. (We need to get those comment hyperlinks hyperlinking! And many others.)
• Building new features. The community has given us incredible feedback and we have many ideas of our own. Plus you need to be able to see follow-up comments after you comment. (That makes me weep, too. Sorry.)
• Writing. We not only have more time to work on Dribbble, but also to write about it. It’s fun, we love this community and want to be more transparent about what *we* are working on. We now have time to be more active in doing so.

One final, but important, note: We owe a HUGE debt of gratitude to our advertisers who took a chance on a new platform. Without ad revenue, I could not have taken the risk to do this full-time. If you haven’t already, please check out the advertising page where our current advertisers are displayed on the right. Simply click through and buy all their products :)

http://dribbble.com/site/advertise

Now back to practice so we have more to show on the court. 1 … 2 … 3 … DEE-FENSE!

Fist bumps,

Rich
Employee #1