In , DeviantArt advertised having 65 million monthly visitors. Now DeviantArt is hoping to reclaim its place as the creative social platform for artists — and it might be the perfect time. Platform fatigue is setting in, and artists are looking for other options. Eclipse is rolling out to users now, and the aesthetic is decidedly more modern, available in a light or dark theme.
User profiles are more customizable with rearrangeable Wix widgets and huge header photos. There are redesigned pages for deviations what DeviantArt calls submissions that let you choose your background to make art stand out, and expanded search functionalities that let users browse commissions, polls, and tags. Community reaction to the redesign appears to be split. But none of the redesigns have been as drastic as this.
If you buy something from a Verge link, Vox Media may earn a commission. See our ethics statement. DeviantArt will continue to operate as a standalone company, and will put investments into building out desktop and mobile apps.
Those places can include, of course, Wix. It still features an army-green layout with skeuomorphic buttons, and a Myspace-like comment wall where other users can leave shoutouts and compliments on your profile. It also kept the blog feature which, nowadays, is used more widely as an update or a work spotlight tool rather than a straight-up journal. The acquisition comes after Wix president told Reuters that the company is attempting to lure in paid subscribers by creating niche products geared toward creatives, such as photographers and musicians.
Subscribe to get the best Verge-approved tech deals of the week. I've used DeviantArt on and off, but haven't touched it much at all in the last few years. The artwork I have posted on DeviantArt still gets regular views, likes and follows - and I think that since the Eclipse redesign, engagement has actually increased. But honestly, the amount of activity on DeviantArt isn't enough to draw me back in to using it again just yet.
A large part of the art community feels there's a lot left to be done before DeviantArt is worth using again, and I agree - I'll keep an eye on where the site goes and it's engagement levels, and consider whether I should jump back in. For now, I'm happy to prioritise ArtStation with its more engaged and growing userbase, and use Discord for community interaction with other artists.
That's exactly what I'd recommend to any other digital artist who doesn't already have a substantial DeviantArt following. Here's an article we've written about the best alternatives to DeviantArt.
If you want to meet other artists and find a community, I recommend checking out our article about artist discord communities.
I hope that DeviantArt continues on it's current trajectory of improving and listening to its community's feedback, so that we can enjoy another great place to share our work and meet artists. I started making digital art in , and became a full-time freelance artist in , able to work on my own schedule from anywhere in the world. Now, I want to help young artists make the same journey! Self Employed Artist. Is DeviantArt dead? Is it worth using anymore, or should you just use other platforms?
When you buy through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Learn more. DeviantArt simply isn't the site it used to be - is it no longer worth using, or should you still consider investing some of your efforts there? Contents hide. While not nearly as problematic as Nazis, but still iffy, the plethora of fetish communities being on DeviantArt is a known fact of the Internet.
DeviantArt has its restrictions like only being able to post one photo at a time as well as having to categorize every post and flag is it is mature content. One of the main reasons for the buyout was the acknowledgment that DeviantArt has declined in popularity due to bigger, general social media sites like Tumblr and Instagram appealing to artists more.
There were many different opinions on the buyout in the DeviantArt community. Another concern people were discussing was copyright. For many artists who use and post on the Internet, copyright has been a huge issue. There have been many cases where sites that people post art on have used artworks without permission in their promotions and failed to give credit or compensation to the original artist. Wix heard these outcries and addressed the valid concern in a journal post on deviantArt itself:.
Deviants continue to own their own works. Despite a lot of people absolutely hating the OG design and welcoming the idea of a new one, many were still attached to it specifically because the site has maintained that design for almost two decades.
Veteran DeviantArt user Lois van Baare had this to say about the new design:. Angelo Sotira recognized the split opinions on the new design and said that users can keep the original layout for as long as they need until the majority of users adjust to the new design.
While the new design looks very sleek and modern, it does have its bugs and growing pains as expected. People are unhappy with the bugs, but this is just something that comes with changing a site that has been around for so long.
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