A few months back, Trent Walton (@TrentWalton) and Yaron Schoen (@Yarcom) asked if I’d be interesting in contributing “a swap” with another designer for their new project, Design Swap. For those unfamiliar, Design Swap is a way to “build closer friendships with other designers online by letting someone design on your website, whether it’s a blog post, banner image, or “tiny footer doodad.” I couldn’t have been more excited to be apart when asked. They also asked if I had anyone in mind that I’d like to partner with on this fun project, which at the time, I started chatting and DMing Dan Mall (@DanielMall) on Twitter more frequently.
Aside from being familiar with Dan’s work, Big Spaceship (the company he currently works for), a reader of his blog for quite some time, and a few quick chats back and forth on Twitter and Instant Messaging, I really didn’t know much else. This made for a great introduction for the Design Swap project: “Spreading Camaraderie Through Good Design.”
Dan kindly accepted working together, which began with a few brainstorming sessions over the phone for a few weeks. At the end, we decided what better way to approach the project than getting to know each other better through recording observations of each other day’s and then sharing what we both did on a particular day.
We also thought it would be interesting to add a few limitations to our swap by forcing each other to design in the other person’s website style. This meant my swap of Dan’s life had to look, feel and share resemblance of danielmall.com using the same fonts and style, which was inspired by the NY Times and LA Times. We left the idea of how we both wanted to approach sharing this information to the other person, as long as it followed the style restrictions.
Having always enjoying looking at infographics and always wanting an excuse to make one of my own, I thought this would be a fun occasion to do so, while also poking a bit of fun at Dan’s awesome and meticulous recording of that day. I hope you enjoy my Design Swap with Dan’s daily data: A Day in the Life of Dan Mall. Feel free to also read more on our swap over at Dan’s site.
It’s without a doubt been a lot of fun getting to know Dan on a more personal level (apparently he and I lived in Philadelphia at the same time for like 8 years and never knew it) and working with such a smart, talented and passionate guy on this swap! Also, kudos to Yaron and Trent for such a brilliant idea. As an independent designer, it’s really great to connect with so many other talented folks through digital format and glad Trent and Yaron both share that same vision of spreading closer friendships online.
Feel free to also get involved with Design Swap by signing up (for free of course!) and selecting who you would like to pair with. Happy swapping.
