Screenshot of desmob.com, taken Thursday, January 6

Over the holidays a curious new website, DesMob.com, launched with pictures of people throughout Des Moines’ creative class. It’s a side project from 8/7 Central, a screen printer and creative agency. The website describes itself as a “virtual rolodex” but we weren’t exactly sure what to make of it. I recently had the chance to ask Ben Anderson, from the 8/7 Central team, about it:

We can’t really take much credit for it, Portland did it first [with prtlnd.com]. We just thought it was pretty sweet and built a copycat site. I don’t think we really know what it is yet, it wasn’t created for any greater purpose. We like the way it feels and looks, but it isn’t really the future of what 8/7 Central is. Mostly it was just built for fun, and we have gotten a lot of positive response from it. And we sold all of the contact information people provided us to a man in Nigeria.

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Give credit to Justin Meyer and John Solarz, and Portland.

All jokes aside, Ben tells me they are pronouncing it “Dee Mo” (silent “s” and silent “b”) and if nothing more, it’s an interesting way to literally view the faces of creatives in our community.

As of today, 223 people have registered at DesMob in categories that range from baristas to digital communications to entrepreneurs.

To explore DesMob, visit desmob.com, and when there scroll over a picture to find a link to that person’s business or personal website.

 Screenshot of desmob.com, taken Thursday, January 6