With a name like Nenuno you may be forgiven for thinking Nenuno is a blog all about the late seventies show involving Robin Williams as an alien talking to a chap called Orson. As I am a fan of Mork & Mindy I decided to find out more.

Sadly I was wrong no Mork, and Mindy had left the building. What I did find however was a very interesting blog run by a gentleman called Dan Whiteside.

Being the intrepid and somewhat brazen individual I am, I decided to send Nenuno a Tweet to see if he would be interested in an email interview. The fruits of this Tweet are revealed below and very tasty fruits they are too, succulent you might say?

Thanks for agreeing to an interview Nenuno much appreciated, first up can you tell me about you as an indivdual and what do you do in the real world?

I’m 23 years old and I come from a small town in England called Darwen. I work for a large online/catalogue retailer as an IT Buyer and Web Developer, I basically buy servers, PC’s, laptops and software via various vendors and resellers. I also manage a domain name estate in excess of 1100 domains using a small tool I developed. On occasion I assist the lead web designer for one of our companies on various projects involving WordPress.

Nenuno in a nutshell whats it all about?

Nenuno was created for the sole purpose of showcasing the freshest web interfaces, logotypes and creative resources. But as time has gone on I have taken nenuno down many paths to try and find something that attracts readers with the intention of them wanting to return. It has been a difficult journey as blogging was something new to me and I have just learned new methods and techniques to help promote the articles and showcase I write.

I am an avid reader of all things Design related and stumbled upon Nenuno around three months ago, must say I really do enjoy it and look forward to new posts. How did Nenuno come about, what was your inspiration?

When was Nenuno launched?

Nenuno was launched on the 9th March 2010, attracting well over 20 visitors a day!

What sort of response have you had since launching Nenuno?

It has had a fantastic response (I hope!), always getting positive feedback from fans who love the site. Twitter and Facebook have been an excellent method for me to interact with the readers and hear what they have to say! It has also given me the chance to partner with two other blogs Design Juices and Lucas Cobb Design, which has pushed nenuno to a whole new level with covering new topics such as Photography and Product Design. I really enjoy working with Lucas and Jared and hope to continue working with them for the foreseeable future on nenuno and other design projects!

I am also been given the opportunity to guest write for larger design blogs with recently submitting an article to Abduzeedo (hopefully it will be shown!)!

I see that you have guest writers on Nenuno as well, can you tell us a little more about your colleagues?

There is now three of us working on nenuno Jared Thompson from Design Juices and Lucas Cobb from Lucas Cobb Design. Jared has recently graduated from University and is based not far from me actually and Lucas is a Photographer and Developer from Charleston, South Carolina who has just landed a very big freelance gig, not sure I’m allowed to say where?!

Couldn’t help but notice that Nenuno is built on WordPress, what made you choose this over other Blogging / CMS Platforms?

With using WordPress at work, it was a no brainer to work with it on nenuno. Other platforms such as Drupal didn’t really appeal to me and I wasn’t up for learning how to develop using a different platform!

Any WordPress Plugins your using that you would recommend others use?

There are a few plugins I would say every WordPress install should be running and they are:

All in One SEO Pack
Facebook Like Button Plugin (by Lucas Cobb)
TweetMeme Retweet Button
WP-PageNavi
Yet Another Related Posts Plugin

Tips, you obviously have had a measure of success with Nenuno, how did you get the word out? What methods to increase traffic have you employed?

At first, I didn’t really know how to promote nenuno. To start driving a few visitors I would let the designers/artists know when I showcased their work by posting a short paragraph on there portfolio. It was actually through Twitter I interacted with Jared and he showed me other methods of increasing visitor numbers, one being the most painful job of all – submitting to community news feeds! These lists just keep getting bigger and bigger. Now for each post we submit to other 100 social bookmarking and design blogs.

Another method we have used to generate a few extra visitors is such services 2leep.com and Marketgid. These sites showcase your articles across there large network and it is really hit and miss though as your articles/showcases need to be approved.

Whats next for Nenuno, I notice you have stated on Twitter that your Community news section is being revised, what can we expect from this?

We have recently partnered with Design-newz.com to showcase there latest submissions for the time being. We are waiting for the plugin TDO Mini forms to be supported with WordPress 3.0 custom post types and using Lucas’s experience with this plugin already we plan to start making community news a much bigger thing for nenuno.

Are there any other projects your working on at the moment?

I am always thinking a head, I have another redesign in mind which should be something to look forward to. We are also planning more articles that will give more user interaction with commenting and Jared has been working on a very nice giveaway for our readers.

When your not busy working on Nenuno what do you like to do, Hobbies, music your into, day job etc. (only tell me what you feel comfortable with!)

I am an avid gamer, so when I’m not working on nenuno I am either playing games or watching films! Aion and Battlefield Bad Company 2 are where I hide mostly these days. It is nice to take a break from blogging. Before I started working on nenuno, gaming was mostly all I did (ex World of Warcraft addict), so I thought I should start working on something that gave others some enjoyment .

I love my music, some say I have a weird taste? Its mainly Japanese related and I am sure you can see how much I love Japan with my recent articles on nenuno.

How can people get in touch or see what else your up to?

I can be found mainly at the following places (Where I check daily)

Twitter: @nenuno
Facebook: Nenuno’s fanpage – http://www.facebook.com/pages/nenuno/120320527979889
Facebook: My profile – http://www.facebook.com/#!/nenunocreative
Deviantart: http://nenuno.deviantart.com/

Here endeth the interview…

Inconclusion Nenuno is a great source of information covering a multitude of design aspects, showcasing alternative designers from the normal big hitters. For that they should be applauded, a brave and bold step in direction and one they no doubt will excel in.

There you have it, thank you Daniel, thanks for taking the time out to answer my inane ramblings. If you haven’t already checked out Nenuno by now please do so on http://nenuno.co.uk it’s a great read.

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