I would like to wish all Design Sojourn readers a prosperous, healthy and happy Chinese New Year! Gong Xi Fa Chai and may the year of the Tiger bring you and your family bountiful blessings.

The most astute of all of you regular readers would have noticed that these test posts gravitated towards the type that reflects my time constraints, i.e. short and easy to write. The posts were often on industrial design work, “link loving” (or link sharing), commentaries, quotations and daily photos etc.

However, while I was conducting blog maintenance, I noticed that my meaty posts were bringing back the bacon, so to speak. I discovered that 80% of my most popular posts were Design Articles that were more than 500 words long, with many beyond 800 words. I realized that these longer Design Articles were what defined Design Sojourn in the past, and based on their popularity numbers to date, were what readers wanted.

Interestingly enough, these short posts were damn hard to write, often taking me 20-30 minutes just to proof read a post, simply because I did not like the way I wrote it. I’m known to be anal about details on occasion. So I guess what they say is right, it’s hard to write short posts that are concise. Also, considering the frequency these posts do come up (I just want to share!), it all adds up to the time that I could have used for a meaty post.

So going forward, I will attempt to increase the publishing frequency of longer Design Articles, which is a nod towards quality over quantity. That does not mean that there would not be any well thought out shorter posts on exceptional industrial design work, commentaries or links to great content. It is the Internet after all, and the “world” in there is all about sharing and adding to the conversation.

Some of you may be familiar with my micro-blog The Design of Everyday Things: Todet.com. That site will still be around, but it will not be a source of information anymore. It does not make sense to maintain content on two sites and then asking you to visit both sites when at the end of the day I’m the same author! I respect that you are as busy as I am. However, I will leverage on Posterous’s awesome blog posting system, to help me speed up getting these shorter “appetizer” posts mentioned above published at Design Sojourn.

So with all that, and going into the new year, I love to hear your feedback on the types of posts you have enjoyed here, and the types of posts you would like to see more off?

Thanks for your feedback and have a great 2010 ahead!

Image: Christmas in Love…

I would just like to thank all Design Sojourn readers for their tremendous support and readership in 2009. I have really enjoyed all the comments and experiences you have shared with me, and this has made Design Sojourn an enjoyable blog for all. So thank you very much!

Here’s wishing all you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy 2010!

This post went out a little later than I expected, but I just wanted to remind all of you that the Icsid congress 2009 is but a less than a week away!

If you are not planning on going, you can keep up to date with the action as I will be Tweeting live from the congress at my @designsojourn or the official ICSID congress @design2050 Twitter accounts. By the way if you can’t up with my Tweets, don’t worry as you can search out the #icsid09 hashtag so that you can review the Tweets later at your leisure! I will also do a full congress write up either at the end of each day or if not at the end of it all.

The highlight of this congress is the Design 2050 studios where we can catch design leaders share their thought leadership on what the world will be like in 2050. In particular I’m looking forward to the Studios by Chris Bangle on Personal Emotional Mobility 2050, Feng Zhu on Entertainment 2050 and Ravi Naidoo on Protofarm 2050.

As a member of the congress organizing committee, I will be at the congress, so if you are going to be here in Singapore next week (23-25 Nov), do drop me a note on my contact page or email me at dt [at] designsojourn.com. I would love to catch up with you for a coffee and/or a chat?

Commenting Rules: I love reading your comments as it allows me to interact and learn from you. Being critical is fine, giving constructive criticism, even better. However if you are rude, I will delete your comment. Repeat, and I will blacklist you. The world is full of negativity, so I don’t need anymore on my blog, which I consider my online home. Would you encourage Neanderthal behavior in your home? Neither would I.

Finally please use your personal name or initials and not your business name. By doing the latter, it comes off like spam, and that’s an auto delete. Thank you and I hope you enjoy being part of the conversation!

How true it is. If you consider your blog/website as precious as your home, deciding to delete or spam certain comments gets really easy. I practice a zero tolerance rule against spammers and flamers, but fear not, I often dig through my spam box and fish out the legitimate comments.

Here’s to the never-ending improvement of your experience at Design Sojourn. Thank you!

This was inspired by Tim Ferriss who was in turn inspired by Brian Oberkirch.