2012 review

Dezeen’s year: our highlights of 2012

Marcus Fairs

31 December 2012

And finally… 2012 has been a vintage year for Dezeen, with a major award, high-profile collaborations with Apple and Google and record-breaking traffic to our website.

We were extremely flattered in July when UK newspaper the Independent named us the best architecture blog (above).

Things got even better later that month when we won the prestigious Association of Online Publishers’ award for Digital Business Publisher of the Year (above). The jury described us as “A smart entrepreneurial brand, with beautifully designed products – from websites to pop-up shops. Strong evidence of experimentation, fast growing revenue and audience”.

We were involved in the biggest tech event of 2012 when Apple included us in the launch of the iPhone 5 in September. As well as featuring in the Keynote launch in San Francisco, Dezeen featured in the global launch movie for the new product (the image above is from the Korean version).

Apple featured us again the following month in the launch of the new MacBook Pro (above). Apple used Dezeen to show off the high-resolution Retina screen of its updated range of laptops.

In October we teamed up with Google for the UK launch of Field Trip, an app that pulls up stories from our archive that are relevant to your location. Look out for further map-related collaborations with Google next year…

In November we came close to scooping a second award. We were highly commended in the Digital Service category at the International Building Press awards, where judges described us as an “exciting and successful site” that “presented a progressive direction for a digital publication, while informing on new designs in images, video and words.”

Finally we were tickled to learn that UK newspaper the Guardian launched its new Architecture and Design Blog (above) with the express intention to “beat Dezeen”. Imitation really is the sincerest form of flattery.

Our visitor figures were our best ever this year too, with over 33.5 million visits (up 20% on last year) and over 93 million page views (up 20% on last year). Thanks to all our readers and here’s to an even better 2013.

The number of video plays during the year was over 2.2 million – almost treble the number of plays in 2012.