Tumblr’s Roadmap Heads Straight for the Creative Community

Tumblr founder David Karp showed up yesterday to christen his company’s new office in Richmond, Virginia.

At the opening celebration, the popular blogging platform’s founder spoke extensively about the startup’s plans for the future — plans that definitely set it apart from the product-focused startup scene on the West Coast and plans that will make the most of the company’s recent $30 million round of funding.

In an interview with local writer Johnny Hugel, Karp said that community — a huge part of Tumblr’s success so far — would play a larger role than product in the near future.

He’s even making community management, especially in creative communities such as fashion and film, a central goal for Tumblr.

“You look in fashion, creative writing, photography, music, so many of these creative circles,” said Karp, “and we have these really substantial communities that now live on Tumblr.

Tumblr has, in the past, put on events like concerts and film festivals around those groups. “They did wonderful things for the communities… resonated through the industries and brought attention to all of the stuff that was happening on Tumblr,” Karp continued.

“So that’s something that we want to get better at doing this next year… I imagine that by the end of this year, that’ll end up being maybe be half of our team.”

One new hire who will be working extensively in events and community is Rich Tong, Tumblr’s fashion director. We’re not aware of any other startup outside of the fashion world that has a fashion director; but we suppose that’s the point: Tumblr doesn’t see itself as being outside the fashion world or any other creative community.

Tong founded Weardrobe, a social fashion site that was acquired by Google mid-2010. In addition to being a good product guy with an entrepreneurial bent, Karp says, “He also has the fashion vocabulary, so unlike everybody else at Tumblr, he can go into that community and say, ‘Well, why do you use Tumblr? What could we be doing better? What’s the most interesting stuff that’s going on right now, and where do we find it?’”

Karp said he expects to make as many as 70 new hires before the end of 2011 — a move that would more than triple the startup’s current staff.

As far as product goes, Karp says engineers are still focused on creating the best experience possible. Soon, he said, “directories are getting a major overhaul.” In keeping with the company’s focus on community, Karp also expects to release some custom tools around film festivals and major fashion events.

We’ve also have a shiny new iPad app to look forward to, and mobile apps will also continue to be a focus of the company, whose mobile dev team all reside in Richmond and will be holding court at the new offices.

Can a strong focus on the creative communities help Tumblr continue to compete against forces like WordPress and Posterous? This NYC-based startup’s approach to community is quite different from what we’ve seen in other corners of the world, but for this product and this platform’s users, it just might work.

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Twitter’s Creative Director Talks Design, UX and Inspiration

In the web design community, Doug Bowman has distinguished himself both as an individual and as a part of big-name creative teams. Currently, he is Twitter’s creative director, a job he took after leaving Google last year.

This year, Twitter’s dramatic redesign was the talk of the web — the “new Twitter” is both beautiful and functional. Its addition of new features is perfectly balanced with its subtle aesthetic upgrades. Overall, the design team didn’t just make the product prettier, it made the user experience vastly more interesting, simple and pleasurable.

The new Twitter is a clear product of Bowman’s philosophy on web design:

“In a world where data bits flow abundantly, our minds have developed filters to sift through the overflow of useless and badly designed information. While design must appeal to our sense of aesthetic, it must not stand in the way of delivery, cause complications or introduce stumbling blocks.

“Rather, the presence of design should simplify and facilitate our everyday life, enable us to accomplish our tasks more effectively and help us enjoy them along the way.”

We asked Bowman to shed some light on a few subjects, including the redesign. After all, when your application is at scale and users are already accustomed to an experience, how do you change the interface gracefully and well?

“Know very well the reasons why the product needs a redesign, or if it does at all,” Bowman told us. “Understand that users are creatures of habit, and change is often hard to move beyond. Allow them time to try and shift over to a new design.

“However, don’t be afraid of taking substantial risk with a redesign if the product needs a substantial overhaul to improve the user experience,” he added. “Some redesigns are often appreciated more for what they eliminate than what they add.”

Bowman emphasized user experience above all in his notes to us. He’s not the kind of art-for-art’s-sake aesthetic snob who’d sacrifice a user’s needs for a designer’s wants.

“As designers, one of our ‘wants’ should always be to help satisfy user needs. [It] kind of goes with the job description when the user experience is so critical to a product’s success. Good designers understand and are attentive to what users need and want to accomplish,” Bowman explained. “Great designers realize that fulfilling those needs can happen in unique and unexpected ways.”

In addition to reimagining one of the modern web’s more popular applications, Bowman has also built an extraordinary design team at Twitter. Together, they’ve rolled out a string of successful mobile applications in addition to rebuilding Twitter.com.

In a market rife with talent, how do you build a design team that works?

“Look for creative folks who understand basic design principles and critical thinking over those who have sought out advanced skills in Photoshop or CSS,” Bowman advises.

“Hire designers that are more talented than you,” he added. “Encourage everyone on the team to share their work and think often. With a small amount of guidance, trust that they will create incredible experiences.”

Finally, we asked Bowman what most stimulates his creativity. He cited nature and architecture as inspiration, and after his focus on UX, we weren’t surprised to find that Bowman is also inspired by “constant cycles of user feedback.”

Image courtesy of Flickr, gorriti.

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