How To Become A Smashing Magazine Author/Reviewer

• By The Smashing Editorial
• October 28th, 2007
• Smashing Magazine
• Comments Off

Smashing Magazine’s primary goal is to deliver quality material for designers and Web developers all around the globe. Writing takes time. Closely examining the latest developments and tools throughout the Web takes its time as well. Last but not least, preparing articles for publishing takes time. We welcome your participation and help to provide our readers with solid articles and useful insights!

Who Can Become A Smashing Author?

You. However, you need to know exactly what you are talking about and be certain that you can write well; possessing solid writing skills is a must. If this is the case, please follow the following guidelines:

• Contact us (see below how) with a brief description of yourself, your skills and your field of interests,
• Include URLs to some articles or examples that show your skills in your e-mail (please don’t send large attachments — just URLs if possible),
• Include 3 concrete suggestions for topics and articles you’d be glad to explore and write about.

It’s very important for us that you are really interested in the topics you’re willing to write about. A single article is excellent, but a long-term cooperation is even better!

An article doesn’t have to be extremely long; what is important is that you have something to say or to share. For example, our readers are interested in practical insights and valuable tips learned from experience. You can share your ideas, design approaches and techniques or just describe your design process. We are aiming at exciting, creative articles that also cover recent developments in the industry. Finally, we could also use some help in creating unique, carefully prepared round-ups and showcases.

All of our authors get paid. The amount of money depends on the length of the article and its quality. Before your articles go live, we make sure that both sides agree upon the publishing and payment conditions. You can also put a link to your website in the “About the author”-section in the article.

Writing for Smashing Magazine isn’t easy. We expect you to be a professional who knows exactly what to write about and is prepared to invest time into a meaningful, well-researched article.

Smashing Magazine’s Experts Panel

Our Experts Panel was created in late 2010 and is mainly meant to maintain the high quality of all Smashing Magazine’s articles. We now have over 30 experts who have agreed to review Smashing Magazine’s articles before they get published. It is very important to us to keep and improve the high quality of our online publications, so we are trying to do our best to double-check all facts and techniques presented in every article.

Every reviewer gets paid on a payment-per-review basis. If you feel that you are experienced enough to provide meaningful, useful feedback to Smashing Magazine’s articles, please contact us via e-mail at review[at}smashingmagazine.com. Please notice that not all applicants will be accepted — your application has to convince us that you have very strong knowledge in your given fields of expertise. Please provide examples of your work; be it resources, articles or anything else. In general, we are interested in the topics mentioned in the topics overview below.

We have a thorough quality control system in place; a major part of it play more than 120 experts of the industry.

Our Topics

Our main interests are design and development of overall Web Design:

• CSS: Theory, practice, ideas, techniques, creative solutions.
• JavaScript, jQuery, PHP, Ruby, coding, programming.
• Web Design: Trends, detailed showcases, review of design techniques.
• Typography: Type design, font selection, techniques and tools.
• Foundation of design, graphic design, Web design: In-depth design articles that cover history of design, or series of articles on one particular aspect of design, leading the reader from fundamentals to more advanced concepts.
• WordPress, ExpressionEngine, Magento, CMS, Plug-ins.
• Mobile: Designing and developing for mobile devices, iPad, iPhone, Android.
• Photoshop, Illustrator, Fireworks, InDesign, GIMP.
• Time-Savers: Useful tools for designers and Web developers.
• Usability, user experience and usability testing.
• E-Commerce: Trends, techniques, conversion rates optimization.
• Copywriting and content strategy.
• Opinion pieces: Your personal address to the design community.
• Freebies: Icons, fonts, themes, templates we can offer our readers for free.

Sounds Good? Drop Us a Message!

Here is how it works:

• If you are interested in becoming an author, please use our contact form (you will get an auto-responder with more details first) or
• In case you’re rather interested in becoming a reviewer, please send us an e-mail at review[at}smashingmagazine.com.

We are always glad to make new contacts and explore new possibilities. We would be very happy to welcome you in our Smashing team!

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