Own Your Work: Climbing out of the Walled Garden

Introduction

I stumbled upon Dribbble (I’m pretty sure I mean literally, via StumbleUpon - a popular site/browser extension at the time, which guided users through the internet’s maze of links to uncover hidden gems that might otherwise remain relegated to a small following) while in college, and spent hours browsing the site. It was chockfull of beautiful, thoughtful, clever, and inspiring designs.

I can’t emphasize the “inspiring” part enough. As a budding designer, viewing Dribbble made me want to spend 20 hours a day in Photoshop to create something that displayed even a fraction of the quality I scrolled past on the site.

On March 24, 2013, I created my account (I can’t believe it's been nearly 12 years to the day) and it took me 13 months to get “drafted”. Ronald Hagenstein invited me on April 21, 2014. Was it frustrating that it took that long to be invited to post on the platform? A little. Am I glad it was invite-only, and that I had to reach out to multiple designers to be able to join? Unequivocally, yes.

What Was Dribbble?

Though most of my audience is likely familiar with how Dribbble originally functioned, I’ll catch up those of you who aren’t:

For a long while, Dribbble (intentionally misspelled to help with branding and purchase an inexpensive domain name, as I recall the origin story) kept with its basketball metaphor. Once “drafted” (invited to be able to post images on the platform), you would make “shots” (post images, mainly work-in-progress, of your designs to the site), “rebound” other people’s work (create a reply to or remix of a designer’s work), could join “teams” (actually, exactly like it sounds, no sports analogy needed). Some of these terms are still used on the site, but the charm of their origin washed away years ago.

The first Dribbble post was even more unremarkable than Jack Dorsey's now-famous first tweet. It was a humble screenshot of an online commerce solution that co-founder Dan Cederholm was working on. No caption, just content. To date, the shot has only 30 comments and 185 likes. It’s not at all noteworthy, outside of its historical significance to the platform. And that’s what was so beautiful about Dribbble. It was a simple, scrappy site, where designers posted what they were working on. Aside: I rebounded the first shot to post this blog cover image as an homage to where the site began, and possibly where it has ended.

Dribbble was a vibrant and welcoming community of the very best designers in the world. I felt honored when I got invited, as so many designers did. It was a privilege to be able to post on the platform. You were limited in the number of posts you could make each month, presumably with the intent of keeping the quality bar high, eschewing the “quantity” metrics in favor of only showcasing aspirational work.

The invite-only system was abandoned in 2021, though by that point it wasn’t surprising given how far Dribbble had drifted from its original concept. For the last several years, Dribbble’s standing in the community it once helped foster has slid. This week, it seems to have fallen off the cliff entirely.

What Is Dribbble?

As you’ve likely learned by now, earlier this week, Dribbble announced that it would be changing its Terms of Service. This is far from rare. My inboxes are endless conveyor belts of, “We've changed our Privacy Policy” and “Our Terms of Service are changing” emails. But this particular change was an impactful one. It announced that "designers are no longer permitted to display or share their contact information (like email addresses, phone numbers, social media handles) prior to client payment on Dribbble".

The company masquerades this change as “protecting” designers from fraud, though, plainly, this is a cash grab. Dribbble saw that it was making more revenue by becoming a jobs platform, and rather than have this feature co-exist with the beauty of sharing inspirational work, it doubled down on keeping every penny it could confine to within its walls. Gone would be the interconnected nature of Dribbble with outside communities and links. The walled garden took its starkest (and perhaps final) form.

Public and private sentiment from designers is universally and resoundingly in opposition to this change. Several designers I greatly admire have announced they will no longer be posting on the platform. Some designer have deleted their entire account in protest. Cliché as it is to write, this feels like the nail-in-the-coffin moment.

While it might not read like it, I write this post from a position of love. Past tense, unfortunately. I loved Dribbble. In 2015, I attended multiple Dribble meetups. In 2018, I attended Hang Time LA and met some designers whose work I had discovered on the platform. I met co-founder Dan Cederholm and told him it was a goal of mine to speak at a future Dribbble event. I drafted 12 designers and referred countless non-designers to the site for inspiration. I found both full-time and freelance work on the platform. Until I wrote this post, I hadn't taken time to really reflect on the wonderful joys the site brought me, but since doing so, the nostalgia has built up.

Today, those fond feelings are more of a distant memory than ever. Today, I only tolerate Dribbble. For a long while, this site's home page showed recent work, and each image linked directly to the associated work on Dribbble. That was the only way I linked my work. That’s no longer the case. I’m updating my home page to create a feed, where I’ll link to various social media site posts. I don’t know if Dribbble will be one of those links.

Dribbble has dropped the ball (pun intended) several times in recent years, but last May, with the introduction of a new CEO, it seemed like it was finally realizing what made the original community so special. It reopened the ability for designers to freely search for one another and claimed it was positioning designers to receive an influx of client projects.

Like most things that need to generate revenue, it began to shift to focus less on this core, beautiful designer experience, and more on the bottom line. There were pivots, and missteps along the way, such as removing the invite system, removing the ability for designers to find other designers (though later brought back years later), allowing content that was blatant copyright theft to become popular on the platform, and more. Users will tolerate mistakes. They’ll even tolerate abominations, so long as the platform appears to be working to improve.

In 2017, Dribbble was acquired by the holding company, “Tiny”. While the site had issues before being acquired, it still had much more of its original charm. According to Tiny’s site, Co-founder Dan Cederholm said, “I was extremely pleased with how smooth a transition the acquisition was for our team and the community. Zero disruption and a seamless passing of the torch to Tiny.” Since the acquisition, the platform has experienced quite a few seams.

What Will Dribbble Become?

I’d love to say I’m canceling my Dribbble Pro subscription, and deleting my account. The reality is, I can’t do that. Not because I don’t want to, but because I’m a Designer. Capital "d". This is my job. It's not just my passion, it’s my livelihood. I cannot run the risk of missing out on an opportunity that I will receive on the platform. If I could justify saying “no” to the amount of money left on the table by leaving the platform, I’d do so. But I won’t pretend that I can take that risk at this point in my life and career.

For everyone who can, I commend you. You’re standing up for what you believe in, whether that results in the loss of financial gain or further notoriety. At this stage, I won’t join that movement. But I also won’t be championing Dribbble either.

I didn’t think I’d get to the point in my career where I view Dribbble as I view Adobe - a necessary nuisance in a designer’s toolkit - but here we are.

For over a decade, every time I’ve been asked where I draw inspiration from for design, Dribbble has gotten a mention. I don’t know how many times, exactly, but well over a hundred, easily. That sounds small. Maybe it’s nothing. But when I mentioned Dribbble in the past, if the person was familiar with it, they’d eagerly nod along. If they hadn’t heard of it, they checked it out.

I’m not alone in this past reverence.

I hope the people who made this decision at Dribbble (or for it, from the ownership side) find out what the community meant to people. Maybe the outcry will change minds, maybe it won’t.

But, no matter what changes the company makes from here, one thing that I won’t let them take away is the fondness I hold for the early years I enjoyed the platform. I’ll always look at that moment in time with a smile. That is due in part no doubt to the period I was at in my life, in my early twenties, with a naive vision for what the future would hold. But it’s also due to the sheer care and love that went into the community. That I will miss.

When I make my daily design post, Dribbble will still be a stop I make along the way. But that's all it'll be, unfortunately. A brief glimpse at once was, and what I hope someday will return to be.

From Dribbble’s announcement blog post: “Today is another special day because it positions us to deliver on our company mission more fully than ever before – for the long haul.” For all that Dribbble has meant to me and many designers over the years, I hope the latter part is true because the former certainly seems to be. March 17, 2025, was a “special” day. As of now, it seems to many to be the day that Dribbble died. I’d love to be proven wrong in thinking that Dribbble’s best days are behind it. Time will tell.

Thanks for the fond memories, Dribbble. Truly. I hope there are more to come, but I suspect that won’t be the reality.

The Reactions

Competitors are already taking advantage of this announcement. Earlier this week, Contra - a platform built to connect freelancers with some of the best companies in the world - announced it's beta testing a Dribbble profile import feature. It's an easy way to bring your work from one platform to another. I applaud the Contra team and their willingness to continuously improve the platform. They're listening to the community and building accordingly. I set up my Contra profile a little while back and will continue to add work/services there.

If you're thinking of joining Contra as a freelancer, I'd greatly appreciate you using my affiliate link. I'll receive a few bucks if you sign up with my link and complete a client project.

At the beginning of this year, I began posting daily about my design work. I dove back into designing simply for the love of it. In addition to posting client work, I've posted my personal work. And, in addition to Dribbble, I've been posting on X, Threads, and Bluesky. Now, I'll be adding Layers to that list. I'm glad I began diversifying, as this latest policy change from Dribbble only emphasizes the importance of doing so.

If Monday’s announcement (re-)taught me anything it’s that I need to own the platform. I need to own the way my work is shared.

Whether or not Dribbble reverts any of its latest policy updates to curtail the current backlash from the design community, the message remains: you need to own your work. I don’t mean owning the copyright/intellectual property, as we often work for companies who own that. I mean that you need to own the distribution channel for your work.

How you disseminate your content has to be under your control. If you build your reputation on a single platform, you don’t fully own that reputation. In an instant, that platform can pivot, be purchased, or disappear altogether.

Starting a Newsletter

I’ve never collected email addresses from my audience. It’s always seemed like a hassle. But, to practice what I'm preaching, today I'm starting a newsletter. I don’t know how often I’ll publish. I do know that when I send out the newsletter, it will be worth reading.

Inspired by a recent tweet from Paul Stamatiou, I’ve set up a Kit (formerly ConvertKit) account to manage email addresses and deliver the newsletter.

Paul Stamatiou @stammy

I’ve been really impressed with @kit - just used it to send an email to my website subscribers. There’s basically no newsletter service that works for small audiences with very infrequently sent emails and doesn’t charge monthly. I send an email maybe 1-2x a year. Kit is free for the first 10k subs, which I’m well within.

I used to host my own email server and send emails with AWS SES but did not want to deal with managing yet another server and keeping it up to date.

I used their API to ensure emails on my homepage get added directly without having to go through a form and get the double opt-in incentive email pretty easily, too.

10:29am · Jan. 19, 2025