the Designer Pages blog

Good morning everyone. We pushed some major updates to the site last night. Probably the most apparent is our new header. We’ve tightened that red bar a whole lot and killed the ‘People’ and ‘News’ tabs. That doesn’t mean we’re killing people and news from the site! Both people and news will be reintegrated back into the site in the coming weeks, but more seamlessly (at least we think).

You’ll recognize the ‘Dashboard’ , ‘Products’ , and ‘Clippings’ tabs… those are here to stay. Each tab is an expandable navigation-element so be sure to explore. There’s no more sub-navigation bar but rather saved products/clippings, contacts, workspaces, and messaging are all included in a pull-down form for the ‘Dashboard’ tab. ‘Feedback’ and ‘Help’ are now in the global footer. And the ‘Products’ and ‘Clippings’ tabs likewise have pull down goodies of their own. Perhaps the most important, visit Products > Collections. This is an older feature we’d played with in the past, but we’re about to really bring it to spotlight. The concept driving Collections is social curation. With nearly 50,000 supplier-generated products already listed to Designer Pages, we’re sitting on an enormous mound of product information, and we need help making sense of all this information. Here’s a short screencast explaining the feature further.

We’re pushing this feature out the door with the help of our blogger friends and a variety of design experts. For example, have a look at the ADA Compliant Appliance collection curated by Stephanie Ebeyer. Or Paul’s Recession Anti-Depression collection curated by Paul Petrunia. Or the Luxury Products collection curated by Adam D. Tihany. Or the Products for Skycrapers collection currated by Dan Kaplan. There are a whole bunch of collections already live so be sure to have a look, and we’ll be inviting more and more people to participate, so you’ll want to keep checking back. If you’d like to curate a collection of your own, please send an email to [info at designerpages dot com].

But perhaps the biggest and most exciting update to Designer Pages, you’ll now see Premium Listings displaying above all search results. These are sponsored product pushes to help point you towards items that various brands think you must know about. We promise these Premium Listings will always be contextual so don’t worry about this getting in the way of your work. If anything, this will help you stumble upon products you should be seeing even faster. Participating manufacturers include Duravit, Knoll, Dornbracht, Grohe, Arconas, Bendheim, Emeco, SPI Lighting, Arnold, Thermador, and more! If you’re a manufacturer that might want to learn more about Premium Listings, please send an email to [premium at designerpages dot com].

So what’s next on the development calendar? Product Detail pages are about to get a major re-design… and I mean major. Search Results will have a new view. Can you say ‘g-r-i-d’? And we’ll be releasing a variety of widgets to help you explore product information with even more zest. We’re excited to have this opportunity to grow this community outward with all of you. Thank you everyone for the support.