Share your Work-- Forum overhaul

[Gregory-CJ]

Affinity photo is such a great tool and I would like to see an image/ thumbnail based UI for the Share your work portion of this forum.

Right now with the text based forum presentation, it doesn't really lend itself to browsing , in my option.

A richly, decorative  page with the current  thumbnails of images created by the users would be very attractive and would invite more participation within the share your work forum.

Your thoughts would be appreciated. see attachments.

 

 

 

 

[GarryP]

The "Share Your Work" section is, as I see it, more like a 'clubhouse notice board' than any kind of curated art gallery.
Like Pattou said, it's more of a place for people to bounce ideas around than a formal showcase of finished works.
If you do want to see a curated selection of great images then Affinity Spotlight https://affinityspotlight.com/ is probably the best place to go.
Having said that though, dipping in to random threads in "Share Your Work" can give some very nice surprises.

[Gregory-CJ]

I did hesitate initially about posting the request to overhaul the  "share your work forum" as  I would rather that Serif focus in on perfecting their software but having said that, it would be nice to "see" what people are doing....sketching or polished work in a thumbnail UI rather then "reading" titles in  a text based UI.

Thanks Garry P for the spotlight link... definitely a curated environment.  Perhaps a thumbnail UI for Share you work forum would encourage more traffic and participation of the end users. Right now I wonder if it is really worth my time to post there?

[Gregory-CJ]

Artstation looks like a fabulous place for artists and of course Instagram (which appears to take years to build any kind of following)

Then there is CG society and Deviant Art ( which is poorly designed and needs a major overhaul. I will probably cancel my acct there.)

As you suggest , in time Affinity forums could become more robust..

[GarryP]

I think it would be nice to have a community gallery as mentioned above but I think one of the problems might be that of curation.

Having a community-curated gallery could cause many problems: differences of appropriateness; clashing of egos; 'flooding'; etc.
On the other hand, requiring the Serif people to curate a gallery is probably asking too much of them considering what they're already busy with.

Invision - who make the forum software - have a Gallery App - https://invisioncommunity.com/features/content/ - which "Lets users create and manage their own albums, and determine how visible they are to the wider community" so that might be a road worth travelling down, perhaps.
All-in-all, it sounds like a nice idea but I have my concerns about how this would actually work in practice.

[Gregory-CJ]

On 3/23/2019 at 5:40 AM, GarryP said:

Invision - who make the forum software - have a Gallery App - https://invisioncommunity.com/features/content/ - which "Lets users create and manage their own albums, and determine how visible they are to the wider community" so that might be a road worth travelling down, perhaps.
All-in-all, it sounds like a nice idea but I have my concerns about how this would actually work in practice.

Yes the gallery app looks like a fine solution!

Whether  Serif has the time /interest or resources to deal with this upgrade is the question.

[Gregory-CJ]

Yes, probably " all in good time is Serif's motto"  After all ,they are working on beta versions of AP & AD  and are working on launching  "publisher" soon. 

A redesigned " gallery page" as you suggest, would bring  extra traffic to their site and give  more exposure to the software solutions.

 

[SrPx]

This is my take... Is fine as is... I mostly blame us, the users. We should be posting more (am guilty as heck, more than anyone here) . IMO, the best purpose for this gallery is to show/tell other artists, both (even, specially pros) pros /advanced hobbyists ,but also newbies:  "hey, you can ALSO achieve this quality in your art with Affinity, is not that you can achieve excellence ONLY with the usual dominant suites". I've spoken to several pros, and they're in that wrong line of thought. They have almost built-in an eternal distrust of anything that is not the main industry leader.  Is only VERY rare individuals that followed similar paths (to mine), like learning Blender or using alternatives in other fields, that are more open "by default".  In that regard, the forum gallery is very, very important for the Affinity line. Often people wont go to the spotlight, but the community gallery. Is just a habit for many pros.. IMO, it has some advantages from Spotlight, and are advantages that could quite be hurt if we set a thumbnails gallery with the very best art pieces at the top. In most cases this leads to newbies , people starting with image creation, very scared of posting anything at all (seen that many times), and that would strongly diminish the potential of a gallery like this : Is very important, IMO, that new users feel absolutely encouraged to post. While is also essential that colleagues in the job do see all what is really possible with Designer and Photo. And words and marketing can't reach that far, specially in fields were word of mouth and seeing practical results count often more.... There's absolutely no better method to convince other people than when they see a finished project at high-end, top quality professional level, and u tell them u used these. And this can, and should live well together with very new users art and retouch posts, or even kids showing what they can do with the tools. Maybe am alone there, in that line of thought, tho.

[debraspicher]

I think on the main page, they can have a "curated" version, but a slimmer banner at top with "featured" work... because that's let's be honest, this is a graphics-focused program. More imagery in the forum index couldn't hurt.

However, A banner that is 100% user-generated may become an eyesore depending on what comes up in the reel at any one time. Looking at the design above, it's very clearly highly curated. This isn't going to be the case with user-generated content, unfortunately.

That said, on the INDEX page of the "Share your work" forum... I'm OK with user-generated content appearing up top and a banner similar to this above, then it can be a more "honest" appraisal of what is happening in the community. It will also encourage creators to 1) create moor (always a good thing), but also 2) it will encourage professionals to post their work. So that may alleviate some of the issues in the first paragraph to some degree. However, it doesn't change the fact it's still a double-edged sword and maybe this banner could easily be trolled as well. Perhaps unintentionally, as you'll have someone who suddenly appears and decides to a portfolio dump in one run. That could have unintended results.

Just some ideas. As always, take it all with a grain of salt. <3 We do have design folk who favor minimalism, so they may not like some of these adjustments. I think they could be implemented with the mindset, but very carefully designed, because it's very easy to make something like this go from professional to looking sort of "amateur-esk" if real world content is not considered in its creation...

[Gregory-CJ]

There could be a simple solution that would maintain the "share your work" forum framework.

Presently, when you  mouse over one of the title topics, after somewhat of long wait, a second floating window appears to reveal the top portion of the actual post.   Depending on how the post is composed,  the floating window shows some combination of text and/or image.

All the webmaster has to do is write some code so that a thumbnail of first image in the post shows up adjacent to the title of the post on the "share your work" page. The thumbnail's  position could  replace the current dot or bullet point.  

 On seeing thumbnails located  on the "share your work"  page , the viewer will then have a better idea of what the post is about and whether or not to open the post or move on the the next post.