The following is a brief history of the different versions that dik has gone through since it was created.

Design is Kinky was created by Andrew in mid 1998 in a small flat in Sydney, Australia. His main reason for starting it was simply to get involved in the design community that he saw beginning to grow online. Influenced by sites such as Digitalthread, Zeldman.com, Shift and the K10k crew, as a designer Andrew was excited at the potential that the community showed and decided to jump on board and become a part of it.

So over a few sleepless nights Design is Kinky was born. At the time no one was really interviewing designers, Andrew found the few interviews he had read really interesting, so he felt that this would be a good theme to base the site on. The first Profile was on Niko Stumpo, an Italian designer who Andrew greatly admired (and still does). Niko's Profile set the scene for the following profiles of which there are now over forty. The site also had the, now standard, news section plus the obligatory links and about sections.

Version.01 was a major learning experience. The site started slowly gaining some viewers who appreciated the interesting interviews and also the news links. After around 5-6mths Andrew decided that the site needed a major overhaul and set about designing Version.02.

During this version two major additions to the site took place. One was a new member of the site. Jade Palmer joined Andrew to help maintain the site and also to provide much needed feedback. This version also saw the addition of MUGSHOTS, a new section in which designers were asked to send in photos of themselves for display. This has become one of DiK's most popular sections with almost one thousand mugs beeing posted and around the same number waiting to get on the site.

The design of Version.02 was similar to version one with slight enhancemenets in navigation. Andrew set the middle frame content section out so that it would allow him to change the main page design and section designs with ease. He constantly changed this highlight area and felt that it helped his design skills grow and allowed him to experiment with a variety of styles.

Once again Version.02 was a huge learning experience and Andrew and Jade set out to redesign the site once again.

Version.03 was once again a massive learning experience and, although it was happening slowly, the navigation and usability of the site was improving. Continuing the 'highlight area' theme from Version.02 the new design used submitted photography from dik viewers as a major part of the design. This was set up to allow the viewers to feel they were more a part of the site, a theme that Andrew and Jade had continually tried to emphasise through sections such as the covers and Mugshots.

This version also saw the launch of a new section called Theory. Run by Jade, Theory was set up to allow designers to voice their opinions on design related topics and issues. Three designers are asked to write an article giving the viewer three different points of view.

Although, as mentioned, the site was improving, the backend of Version.03 was a nightmare of massive proportions and so after around 6-8mths the dik crew once again set out to redesign the site.

During the time between Version.03 and Version.04 Andrew's html skills has increased dramatically. Although he is a proud WYSIWYG editor man his experience with using html allowed him to make Version.04 much easier to navigate and browser friendly.

During this version two new main members joined the team. Murray Bell and Karen Ingram joined the dik crew to help out with the news and maintenance of the site and to provide valuable feedback and advice. 4 news editors were also added - Ash Bolland, Von Dekker (both now no longer news editors due to work commitments), Joel Wasserman and Mike Buzzard.

This version also saw the launch of two new sections. Insight (now a part of Focus) is a tutorial section that looks at the creative process as well as technical, and Grapevine, a temporary section that was a diary of Andrew's working trip to London at the start of 2001.

This version stayed up for quite a while as it was easy to use and simple to update and therefore the crew were not as rushed to change it. however the crew finally got sick of it and the design that you are now viewing was produced.