Creative Boom Magazine's Blog

As some of you know, I’m Katy Cowan and I’m the person who started Creative Boom back in July 2009. It’s something I’ve always managed in my spare time, while hubby Tom does all the coding on the actual site.

Our ‘little side project’ has grown and grown over the past few years - something we just didn’t expect. Despite its increasing demands on our spare time, we’ve always been on a mission to provide free support to the creative industries and we hope that’s what we’ve done and will continue to do.

Of course, Creative Boom is now bigger than just the two of us. We’ve got nearly 1,500 people listed in our directory. We’ve got nearly 27,000 followers on Twitter and 9,000 ‘likes’ on Facebook. And we’re now opening up the floor to other contributors and writers on the site. 

If you’re interested - then read these Submission Guidelines on how to start writing for Creative Boom. If your writing is really good, it’ll make it onto The Guardian website and its Culture Professionals Network.

And because Creative Boom isn’t just about me anymore - I’m taking a more professional stance on Twitter. No more hearing me yap on about how I’m doing in Skyrim. No more tweets about pizza or what I’m eating for lunch. Creative Boom on Twitter is purely going to be about sharing our news, features, inspirations, jobs, opinions and everything that’s on there. I’ll still be the person updating the account. I’ll still be about for a laugh. It’s just not about me anymore.

If you want to follow Creative Boom on Twitter - we’re on @Creative_Boom. Tweets will still be from me and I’ll always be about for a chat.

Thanks guys

Katy

Can you believe  it’s been exactly 12 months since the last time Tom and I worked on Creative Boom!? Believe me, we can’t either!

In fact, this time last year, we launched a brand new web design and lots of new features to keep on supporting the creative industries.

Since then, it’s been an amazing year as we became part of The Guardian Culture Professionals Network and got recognised by lots of other huge brands and names, such as Vimeo, the BBC and (my personal favourite) Paul Van Dyk.

And for the past four months, we’ve been working hard behind the scenes on a brand new design and website structure - something that you’ll hopefully find really helpful when it’s finally launched in the next few weeks.

As you know, Creative Boom is something Tom and I run in our spare time. We’ve got our own business Boomerang to contend with and that has to take priority over anything else as we’ve got to pay the bills! So this means we work on Creative Boom during early mornings, late evenings and weekends. We take little opportunities whenever we can afford the time and money to keep improving the site.

This latest version will be our seventh (I think) re-design and launch since we started on 24th July 2009. It will also have lots of new features - ones that we hope will address all of your needs based on your helpful tweets, emails and general feedback.

So keep your eyes peeled - big announcements are coming very soon! Can’t wait!

Katy