Speaking of Clover.

New Look, Stronger Message

As you can probably see, we have a whole new look to our blog. We’ve been wanting to change the look of our blog for a while now, and finally mustered up the time to give it a redesign and new feel.

Along with the new look, we have also decided to change the way we approach writing on our blog. Here’s how and why. (If you don’t want to read the entire long post – which is awesome – skip ahead to the “*” at the end of the post to get it all summed up in one sentence. Slacker.)

The How:

This last year and a half we have really approached our blog pretty much one-dimensionally. The purpose of our blog was really to promote Clover. Whether it be through product updates or through the general changing and growing of the company, we’ve really just used speakingofclover.com to share Clover. As we’ve started our company, this one-dimensional approach has been great- informing our users (and potential users) of our product and company as we grow.

We will continue to use this blog as a product blog, informing everyone of what’s happening with Clover. But one of the areas we have shied away from is actually voicing our opinion in the world of art and technology. We’ve purposely avoided speaking up simply because we didn’t want anyone to disagree with a statement we’ve made, and lead them to discredit Clover as a product.

As we move into this next season of Clover, we’ve decided to say a little more. It’s funny- we really base our company and its direction on some strong foundational principles of product design and development, but we haven’t talked much about them. So in this next season of our blog, we’ll be discussing a lot more of these principles and saying more.

The Why:

So why are we moving away from simply being a company and product blog, and writing more concept-driven content? Besides the obvious goals of offering more content to you and allowing more of a forum to discuss ideas, we have some other reasons for writing with a bit more of a message.

The first reason is that we now feel a strong responsibility to speak into the world of art, product development, and technology.

We have always known our product is revolutionary, but after this first year and a half of existing in the technology industry we’ve realized that some of the founding principles of Clover that we assumed were obvious and elementary, were just that- revolutionary. We have really felt a calling towards speaking into this culture, and pushing these principles of intuitivity, beauty and care for people forward in an industry that typically claims these concepts without practicing them. We really think that as some of these ideas move forward and we begin to speak the same language, our field will truly progress and evolve.

The second reason is that we feel it will give you a better look into our product and what makes it tick. Even if you find yourself disagreeing with our thoughts and principles, you’ll have a much better understanding for how we’ve shaped Clover and why our product is the way it is.

The bottom line is that we really think it’s worth it. Sometimes with speaking boldly about topics you run the risk of having people speak boldly against you. We believe in message enough that we’re willing to risk losing a little bit of love. But we’re hoping that you’ll resonate with what we speak about, and that it will lead you to a better understanding and love of art, design, and the world it’s encompassed in.

So there you go.

*To sum it up- we’re going to be a little bit more opinionated on our blog in order to make the world a better place.

I hope this makes sense. We might be a bit “pie in the sky” about making the world a better place, but we really think that we can help move this industry in a better direction. So we’re gonna try our hardest. Speaking of Clover is going to let the folks at Clover speak out a little.

Posted on January 7th, 2010 under Our Opinions by Jim with 3 comments.