Meet Svbtle, a Villain’s Creation

By: Philip SinghApril 2nd, 2012 Category: News

When well-known designer and writer, Dustin Curtis, aka the Villain, recently talked about Svbtle, the codename he has used for the minimal blogging platform powering his blog, the blogging industry looked at it as a new way of pushing content.

As he does in his design practice, Curtis built the simple admin dashboard with an Ideas and Posts column, with Ideas being small or large pieces he would like to evolve into full-featured Posts. This thinking aspect allows usera to develop their ideas no matter how big or small.

Since the dashboard is minimal, Curtis says that it doesn’t force [him] into thinking about ideas as posts like every other blogging system does. This brings up a good point about writing: the more simple and clean the writing environment, the better chance that the ideas will be developed into articles. Curtis states that he took away presentation options so he could spend more time writing and less time presenting. The easy flow of Svbtle allows the writer to go deep in development and pull out the important things that wouldn’t be seen when with distractions. The post-editor features simply Markdown, a text-t0-HTML conversion tool for writers.

Svbtle isn’t yet open source. Curtis has made Svbtle invitation only by inviting some of the best bloggers in the design and startup community just like himself. Dom Leca of Sparrow and John Collison of the payment startup Stripe are early participants.

Curtis also states that later on he might make Svbtle public, as stated in a Y Combinator submission. In the meantime, he has launched a membership application which allows a user to sign up. Curtis will then moderate and see who will fit his network. Most likely he will keep it invite only, pushing the great content and keeping it great as stated in this comment: The goal is simple: when you see the Svbtle design, you should know that the content is guaranteed to be great.

http://youthtakeaction.com/ Patrick Morris

What are your thoughts on Obtvse? http://natewienert.com/codename-obtvse
http://twitter.com/philipsingh Philip Singh

Yeah, I saw Nate’s creation there. However, Frank Chimero, talked a little bit about this in response to an article that Daniel Howell wrote. Again, it is not appropriate to steal Dustin’s creation. So in a sense, yes I like it, but no I wouldn’t use it because it in my opinion is considered stealing.

Frank Chimero:

“I think once you publish something, you lose control of it. At worst, you inspire mockery and parody. At best, you become material for future work, because what you’ve made is successful, interesting, or relevant. Usually, it is both. All work produces spill-over repercussions that usually go against the will of the work’s creator. The creator wishes to retain authorship and control the work, while those in the culture wish to use, transform, and remix it. If the work is truly successful, it will defy authorship and turn into a shared experience for everyone. Those works are the hardest to control, because they diffuse, and spread wide by permeating into the air. The become a shorthand for those who make or enjoy similar work, becoming a shared vocabulary.

The situation requires things from both those who create the work, and those who wish to use it.

For the initial creator, they must resign most control upon publication, especially on the internet. Their work will be used to say and do things they don’t intend. Ideas, in truth, go further when others carry them, and this usually means they will go in directions the original author did not intend or imagine. For instance, I’ve had a quote of mine (“People ignore design that ignores people.”) taken out of context and used to justify two completely contradictory design methods. So it goes.

For those that use the things made by others, they should credit where possible, and have their work be transformative in some way. They can carry the ideas of others, but they must to take it further or a new direction. Then, they are obliged share alike. To not do both is to go against the goodwill initiated by the work’s creator.

And for both, we should recognize that all creative processes use materials from those who came before us, and respect the meaningful influence of others. We’re part of a long line of people who make things. It is a privilege to get to use the work of others in our own.”

Dustin’s Comment: “Great artists steal.”
http://twitter.com/cjmlgrto CJ Melegrito

Haha, nice! I also tried my luck — I just applied for Svtble just then!
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