HIPINSPIRE
Download QuestionnaireCould 2001's Zeldman.com be sold as an NFT for $600,000?
Update: Since the original publishing of this article on March 26, 2021, Hipinspire did tons of NFT website design client projects.
NFT website designWeb design NFT: who's gonna buy it?
As always, it's an emotion. An experience. It's the life-changing moment when a 15-year old kid from Bosnia saw CSS and Zeldman.com website for the first time back in 2001. If Zeldman, Doug Bowman, 37signals, and others put their landmark website designs from the 2000s into NFT sale, some would be worth 6 or 7 digit figures.
Zeldman and 37signals are Picassos and Van Goghs of my generation.
I would proudly put them on the Hipinspire's website art section. I would proudly share it with my customers in the virtual hall of my design firm. A piece of design history is here on my virtual walls, and I do not care how much it costs...
So yes, I would buy it. Some of the landmark designs are below:
CAN YOU SELL WEB DESIGN TWO TIMES: ONCE TO THE CLIENT AND THE SECOND TIME AS NFT?
Like the guy who sold the Eifell tower two times, this would be a scam. But, there is a solution. As baseball cards represent players, web design cards would represent websites you already sold to a client.
If you have a Dribbble or any other design portfolio, you already had previews of your design work. They look like digital cards that represent some websites. Like baseball cards.
If you could sell baseball cards, why could you not sell the portfolio cards you already have, as NFT?
@awilkinson: Adding the "Buy as NFT" icon to each Dribbble shot would buy you a Gulfstream.
What Satisfaction is for the Rolling Stones, the RBI design is for Hipinspire. For some people, it may be valuable to own, the same way I would like to own Zeldman. Work done for big brands could also be popular, as for example this portfolio card for Coca-Cola.
They are for sale. Hover over it to buy it as NFT. Both RBI (60 ETH, around $100K) and Coca-Cola (6 ETH, around $10K) are the expensive ones, so I would opt-in for some more affordable at 1 ETH (around $1700).
WHY THE PRICE OF THE DESIGN CARDS FROM THE PORTFOLIO COULD GO UP?
Limited supply makes an item scarce and open for speculations. There is one Mona Lisa. There are 10K CryptoPunks. What makes a design portfolio scarce?
The NFT collections are more valuable than single NFT items. Could the whole agency portfolio be sold as a collection? What would make this collection scarce?
A web design agency could "print" as many portfolio items as it wants? Actually no.
A WEB DESIGN AGENCY COULD NOT CREATE AS MANY PORTFOLIO ITEMS AS IT WANTS, AND THAT MAKES THE PORTFOLIO SCARCE
If you are not a designer, you need first to understand how agency portfolios are created and what are the major limitations:
1. Time. There are two kinds of designers: lazy and super busy. For both, the time factor is the limit for creating a portfolio.
2. Perfectionism. You are never satisfied with your portfolio. Like Dre's Detox album, I personally know a graphic designer for 18 years, that is still working on his portfolio website and never made it public.
3. Not updating it. Usually, for designers that have a portfolio, it's outdated and doesn't contain the latest work.
4. Nothing to show. For various reasons, designers do not have anything to show. Not even 4 examples. An NDA is not a reason. Some work for only one client for years. Some don't have anything good enough or interesting to show.
5. No interesting projects. This is a level up, but you need to work on interesting projects to have interesting work in your portfolio.
6. When sliced it doesn't look great. You have time and something to show, only to find out that some great work does not look great when sliced as a portfolio card. As for some people, the pictures do not do them justice. This phenomenon is common in web design. Original work is designed for full screen dimensions. When scaled down to the square card and no matter how you try to cut it, it does not look great.
7. It does not fit well with other work. You have a portfolio card that looks great, but it does not fit well with other cards. It's hard to combine portfolio items on the page. There is a whole art of combining portfolio items for the maximum effect.
8. You need to reduce it. Finally, you have great portfolio items, and you manage to combine them. Now you found that the page looks better when there are 6 instead of 10 items. You need to ditch four.
9. A high barrier for new entrants. As you produce new work, to deserve a place in the portfolio, the work should match all the above criteria. It should be interesting work. It should be visually great. It should look great when sliced into a card. It should fit with other portfolio items. Combining that new item with other items should be better than the existing combination. It takes time to try all variations and decide.
10. Young Turks. You have proven bestsellers in your portfolio. It's always risky to introduce new work. While new work is based on the latest trends, the client could be 2 years behind. Portfolio change usually happens when work is really outdated, and you need to put in new blood. That's usually a few years.
INFLATION OF BAD DESIGN COULD KILL THE AGENCY
The portfolio is paired to the real agency business. Inflation of badly designed portfolio cards would ruin the agency's core business: design services. If the NFT portfolio valuation at one moment surpasses the agency revenues, it means we are in the NFT bubble. The bubble would explode at one moment, but the agency is here to stay.
HOW TO BUY?
1. Browse Hipinspire's portfolio and hover over an item you want to purchase.
2. Click on the 'Buy card' icon.
3. You will be redirected to the OpenSea marketplace, where you can purchase it using Ethereum.
If you don't have Ethereum, it's simple and safe to buy it.
It would not take more than 10 minutes:
1. At OpenSea, you first need to connect to MetaMask or a similar wallet
4-minutes video (first 4 minutes is enough, MetaMask is fine)
2. Then, you need to upload money from your credit card to MetaMask
3-minutes video
If you have any questions, feel free to contact me at mb@hipinspire.com mb@hipinspire.com