For the past four and a half years, anyone who has visited Digg has seen the work of Daniel Burka. But starting at the end of this month, Burka is moving on to a new project, he writes on the company’s blog today. Meanwhile, Digg is bringing in another high profile web designer to be its new Director of Design and User Experience, Jeffrey Kalmikoff, best known for his work on Threadless.
Next month, Burka (pictured) will begin work at Tiny Speck, the new project started by a group of former high level Flickr employees, including Flickr co-founder Stewart Butterfield and former Flickr head of engineering, Cal Henderson. Still not much is known about Tiny Speck, but it’s expected to be some sort of social gaming project.
And Burka’s hiring makes sense; as we reported in July, the company was looking to hire creative and design talent, which clearly Burka is. While the project is based in Vancouver (also where Flickr was started), Burka will be staying in San Francisco, along with several other Tiny Speck team members, including Henderson, Burka notes in a tweet.
Meanwhile, Digg should be in good hands with Kalmikoff. One month ago, he resigned as the Chief Creative Officer of skinnyCorp/Threadless where he had worked for 7 years. He had been planning on taking an extended period of time off, but felt he couldn’t pass up the Digg opportunity, he writes today on his blog.
Kalmikoff didn’t disclose any plans for Digg yet, but it will be interesting to see if the site undergoes a substantial redesign under him. While Digg has undergone several facelifts throughtout the years, the overall design of the Digg button followed by the story headline has remained in tact. Burka is the one who designed the Digg button you now see everywhere on the web.
Threadless has a great design too, but it’s definitely different from Digg.
Burka was a recipient of a 2009 TechFellow Award for Product Design and Marketing.
[photo: flickr/laughing squid]
All these people leaving DIGG before the liquidation event only means one thing: DIGG = DEAD!
I highly doubt that good sir.
I thoroughly agree with this well-spoken gentleman!
Or maybe their options vested.
The pace of change is amazing, even by information revolution standards. http://webupon....ession-vs-spam/
Threadless & Digg have completely different styles, it’ll be interesting to see how well Digg’s new designer can put away the Wacom tablet and pump out new designs.
FWIW I’ve never used a wacom tablet
This is news?!
I for one am happy to see some recognition paid to designers and user experience professionals. These folks play a large part in the success of businesses like Digg, Flickr and Threadless. On the web, the user experience *is* the product to a significant degree.
+1
+2
While Jeffrey has some big shoes to fill, I think he’ll bring a slightly different yet needed creative element to the digg team and community. Big win!
Maybe its just me but neither site has a WOW design really.
I’m not a big fan of Digg’s design (it’s fine, just not inspiring). I’d have to say that I do like Threadless though; feels fresh, clean.
What mainstream +1,000,000 pageview/month website has a “wow” design? It’s not practical and website designs for the masses end up diluted.
how to see more user interactive and friendly design.
That clearly shows Digg is dying. In this real time world, twitter has an edge over Digg or some twitter apps like http://www.boilingpage.com that neatly assembles tweets in different verticals. But Digg is very old fashioned these days.
Another interesting move in designer webland – Zach Klein’s headed to Boxee. Excited to see what happens at all these places.
You know, I’ve been actively looking for a team to outsource a website to.
Programmers are very easy to find. Good ones too. But getting a good designer is a damn hard job.
And its my belief that on the web, design – either in terms of visual appeal or functionality – can be the dealmaker or breaker.
I remember reading this statement: in regular procedural work, the best worker is twice as good as the average worker.
In creative work, the best worker is 10 times as good as the average worker.
Hold on to your designers people. You’ll get great programmers for $300/month here in India.
@MG Siegler, you usually provide good coverage about twitter. i guess because TC50, you didnt have time to look at the new Twitter TOS that was just released i think yesterday
nah, it’s a few days old. we covered it here.
http://www.tech...-belong-to-you/
please, no more articles like this.
really, who cares about some designer changing jobs?
Hey, I heard one of the janitors at google is moving to amazon! Please give this coverage as well.
You’re so wrong. Why would you even make that comment? Go Away.
why is he wrong? who does care?
Custodianlocator.com is covering all the hot janitorial talent poaching in Silicon Valley. I’m pretty sure this blog covers tech related topics.
Digg should rebrand itself http://www.toptenlists.com
Whoops… didn’t mean for that to turn into a link, apologies
Wow, do you take the time to go around the web and post a comment on every article that doesn’t interest you personally?
It’s a lot quicker just to ignore them.
I for one believe that designers play a very significant part in the success (or failure) of online businesses, and I’m happy to see them get some rare recognition.
Oops, that was meant for @chloe above.
Congrats to both on great new opportunities! Really look forward to see what they come up with next. =)
Yeah, it should be interesting. I’m really curious on what will happen with Digg…the visual style I mean…