Reading a forum thread about professional themes on Write.as, I’m mentally at an interesting fork in the road: cater to the people who make things for the love of it, or to those who do it as the means to some professional end?
I think there’s a middle road to take, somewhere in there.
So far, I really built Write.as for the casual writers and people who make things for no reason other than they love to. It’s pure, it’s simple; it’s the reason I personally write — and I think raw, human writing comes from people who do it for the same reasons.
The same goes for digital aesthetics — there’s a place for beautiful design, and there’s a place for raw creative output. One isn’t necessarily “better” or more “right” than the other in all cases, for all people. They’re just different, like the country vs. the city.
This platform’s growth (in all meanings of the word) depends, in part, on catering to some kind of “professional” user class. But instead of swinging us over to stodgy, uptight professionalism, I intend to keep the product in that gray area between hobby and profession, amateur and expert, as much as possible. The line between these categories is truly blurry, when you look at it. So why should our creative tools be drawing it for us?
Thoughts? Discuss...