• One Day

for Design Deep-Dive

On April 13^th, we started collecting #1d4d tweets.

(There’s a whole database sitting on Phong’s computer. It’s so pretty.)

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The premise of “One Day for Design” to engage designers in a global conversation is a great one. It generated a waterfall of thoughts, ideas and opinions. The drawback to a waterfall, however, is that it’s hard to just take a sip.

Here’s a few glassfuls of data to nerd on out.

*(Analysis based on an incomplete dataset. Phong was Midwest-sleeping when the East coast was already twittering and bagel’ing.)

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• Tweeters

Let’s start off with the usual. 3,137 unique tweeters in our sample size. The long tail stands: 66% of those tweeters posted only one tweet. Nearly 90% still only posted less than five things. (That includes posts that were retweets.)

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• Top Talkers

If we flip to the other end, here’s the top 20 talkers:

@KylerBH	100	@TinaMMcPherson	97	@sryanvsa	80	@JulySky20	77
@anitaycheng	75	@mrdavidhong	61	@TheSlush	60	@MATTER	60
@natalka01	49	@sewCLVR	44	@tonyloco	42	@Gelatobaby	40
@erinmharris	39	@nukketdesigner	39	@CreativeVortex	38	@hlocke20	37
@mmarosz	36	@vintageneon	35	@AIGAcsu	34	@chgraphics	34

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@PopularKids

Whether a tweet was mentioning or replying to someone, all-in-all — 8,867 @replies were used. Interestingly, only 1,334 unique elite were mentioned. At the top of the jungle gym is Pentagram with 789.

@pentagramdesign	789	@onedayfordesign	527	@stop	309	@ucllc	294
@espiekermann	247	@debbiemillman	222	@bobulate	195	@signalnoise	173
@bogusky	168	@gelatobaby	145	@kkwalker	129	@zeldman	126
@Draplin	125	@MATTER	119	@mlhdesigner	115	@sryanvsa	72
@AIGAdesign	68	@cherylyau	65	@LogoMotives	59	@JulySky20	53

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• Echo…echo…echo…

I’m fascinated by the contrast of the retweet-ed versus the retweet-ers. Namely the relationship between those who talk versus those who distribute. In this sample, it trends towards two separate groups of people with a few exceptions. Those exceptions are highlighted.

Top Retweeted People
pentagramdesign	758
espiekermann	205
onedayfordesign	179
signalnoise	167
zeldman	118
bobulate	116
ucllc	112
mlhdesigner	111
Draplin	105
stop	103
debbiemillman	90
bogusky	84
cherylyau	61
gelatobaby	58
kkwalker	50
AIGAdesign	44
MATTER	39
LogoMotives	38
davidairey	35
vintageneon	34

Top Retweeters
nukketdesigner	30
gelatobaby	30
MATTER	28
mmarosz	26
PrixMadonna	25
CreativeVortex	25
_ami_d	24
jbchaykowsky	23
KylerBH	20
sudice	19
Madelinnie	19
TinaMMcPherson	18
mrdavidhong	16
suedecrush	16
kaishinchu	15
FreeSpkr	13
penhousedesign	12
andrettibrown	12
debbiemillman	12
hayley_g	11

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• Crowd-Tested.

Twitter-Approved.

These aren’t the most retweeted posts, but rather of the top people retweeted: these are some of their most popular posts.

“If you can’t find a solution, you haven’t found the problem.” John McConnell

@pentagramdesign / 112 Retweets

designers take things apart, evaluate them & put them back together, in a different order. that is how we understand product & process

@espiekermann / 101 Retweets

@bogusky Art is from the heart, Design is from the head. My version: Design is for others, art for yourself

@espiekermann / 27 Retweets

“Don’t worry about people stealing your design work. Worry about the day they stop.”

@mlhdesigner / 90 Retweets

Good ideas come from extended aimless walks.
Bad ideas come from Google images

@bobulate / 49 Retweets

Final thought: Keep doing what you do, do it for love or survival, for pride or money, but always design and think the hell out of it.

@ucllc / 32 Retweets

Designers now seek and find physical and virtual community in many places that didn’t exist 20 years ago.

@stop / 6 Retweets

We can tweet about making a difference,
we can make a difference or we can do both.

@debbiemillman / 18 Retweets

DDC1716:
Every single thing on the page is there for a reason. And line that shit up.

@Draplin / 15 Retweets

Worse than a client who does not value the efforts of a graphic designer, is a designer who doesn’t value of their own time and work.

@LogoMotives / 10 Retweets

It’s a good thing for designers that Photoshop is difficult, because everyone with MS Word thinks they are a writer

@vintageneon / 6 Retweets

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 #Topics

Fairly straightforward data here. Perhaps most interesting is which hashtags make sense on-their-own versus needing context. Also, figuring out which is an inside joke or just spam.

#1D4D (8117) #D4E (115) #staystrongbiebs (95) #designerquotes (84) #design (75) #AIGA (60) #GOODasks (21) #aigamn (18) #DesignChat (18) #agoodboyfriend (16) #ED4D (16) #Photoshop (15) #PW (15) #happyendings (14) #aiga (12) #noideawhatthathashtagisfor (10) #CMYK (9) #graphicdesign (8) #Design (8) #FrankChimero (8) #designer (8) #aigacsu (8) #1D4U (7) #quote (7) #sustainable (7) #fb (6) #pleaseStop (6) #designchat (6) #phxdw (6) #processmagazine (6) #certification (6) #job (6) #accreditation (6) #d4e (5) #1 (5) #freelance (5) #1DAD (5) #365D4D (5) #MadeUpDesignQuotes (5) #art (4) #inspiration (4) #R2D2 (4) #free (4) #education (4) #MATTER (4) #greatcopy (4) #Accreditation (4) #18 (4) #vacations (4) #1D4D-being (4) #1D4d (4) #listenandlearn (4) #branding (4) #travel (4) #thingsiwantsaidtome (4) #Ecuador (3) #AIDA (3) #win (3) #g6 (3) #1d4D (3) #printisdead (3) #sustainability (3) #vein (3) #flash (3) #and (3) #china (3) #designstories (3) #news (3) #allbreakingnews (3) #MISSINGOUT (3) #paper (3) #live (3) #collaboration (3) #Travel (3) #sorryAIGA (3) #designers (3) #fact (3) #theend (3) #1D4D- (3) #nicolascagemovies (3) #spacing (3) #4ed4d (3) #Innovation (3) #typography (3) #advise (3) #aigaeducation (3) #1DTMFNGAWDY (3) #forever (3) #solveD (3) #365d4d (3) #realworld (2) #DCTH (2) #world (2) #cliche (2) #ideas (2) #teachyourchildren (2) #riding (2) #horseback (2) #2 (2) #print (2) #2D4D (2) #MiekeGerritze (2) #arrangements (2) #floral (2) #drilling (2) #bits (2) #Thanks (2) #coastline (2) #archweek11 (2) #recharge (2) #1d4d-related (2) #agree (2) #driving (2) #remote (2) #online (2) #ComicSans (2) #communication (2) #motiongraphics (2) #ffffff (2) #000000 (2) #RDQLUS (2) #777777 (2) #HashTag (2) #listentoyourclients (2) #potential (2) #twitter (2)

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• The Cat,

The Bang &
The Hesitant

This is what gets my motor running. Linguistical breakdowns. First up, is tracking all the question marks (the cat), the exclamations points (the bang) and the ellipses (the hesitant) are.

The other terminal punctuation mark is the period with 8,645 (excluding those poor trios used as ellipses…) Making for a total of 11,959 not counting their comma-colon cousins.

And don’t think the 64 em dashes went unnoticed, you cheeky designers.

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• Refrigerator

Magnet Poetry

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• Takeaways

At the end of the day, this was more of an exercise rather than a robust statistical analysis. I’ll leave that to those took the time to learn what ‘regressions’ actually mean. However, I won’t discount the fact that the main impetus was actually the criticism the event got. It’s true that Twitter wasn’t the best medium to converse about very fundamental issues of our industry.

However that said, the burden of discourse has always been on ourselves. Whereas, the medium may have fell short in cohesiveness: the opportunist, the creative, the designer in us surely see the potential in 30,000 tweets by 3,900 people (numbers from onedayfordesign.org). It’s our job to process, to produce something constructive, to start that very conversation.

At our most self-deprecating, we make pretty things, but our best — we make.

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Share this data-goodness on the twitters and/or the facebooks.

If you’re interested in a brief technical breakdown of this infographic, read it on our fb page.

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