by Vadim Sherbakov / @madebyvadim

It’s been about a month since I joined ZCool — Chinese equivalent of Behance (thanks to my friend who showed it to me) and I wanted to share this z cool resource ;) to the rest of the world.

NOTE: I am not associated with this site, nor do I asked or paid for writing about it. I am just an artist who started to use it and wanted to tell others about it.

So what is ZCool? ZCool is an online website, pretty much similar to Behance, operated since 2006 and gather already 82+ million designers, photographers, illustrators, artists, and creative people. (according to their statement).

So it’s been online a while, why don’t I hear about it? I believe the answer is because it was basically designed for the Chinese audience and their creative circles and … it was all in Chinese, until recently. Not so long ago (I am however not sure when exactly) they implement partial (I will talk about it later) English translation, so it became a bit easier to join this network as a creator.

And so I did month or so ago, and I frankly, so probably should you! Why? Let me go tell you my experience, pro’s and con’s about it.

Don’t get me wrong I like Behance, but recently I was frustrated with it. From countless “Good project! Check out my portfolio!“ comments (thank God they seem to eliminate it), lack of interactions and engagements (with around 8800 followers, I sometimes get around 10% views on some , not-so-bad projects), strange awards system (I am not complaining I get 31 awards myself, but some projects that been awarded lately perplex me so much), followers and likes purchases, list goes on.

So I was looking to “bring new blood”, to explore new platforms and markets. Dribbble, UP, 500 px, Cargo, I use some, but they are a bit niche, when Behance is a more multidisciplinary platform — You can add both a short drone film project and App design in the same portfolio :)

So I was looking for something similar and ZCool was a great choice. I know that the Asian market is a huge opportunity, yet to explore, so it was a bonus as well.

So far ZCool accepting lon ins to the site via phone to those countries only: 

China +86

Hong Kong, China +852

Macau, China +853

Taiwan, China +886

US +1

Japan +81

South Korea +82

Malaysia +60

Singapore +65

Vietnam +84

Australia +61

Canada +1

United Kingdom +44

France +33

Russia +7

Germany +49

Thailand +66

India +91

Philippines +63

Brazil +55

Indonesia +62

Italy +39

ZCool site Structure:

ZCool structure is similar in some way to Behance. They have Home with featured projects, new and upcoming.

Discover page with Home page recommendations (aka featured with red flame icon near project) and Editor’s choice (I believe it similar to an award or Behance top).

On Discover page, you can filter projects by category, city, equipment used etc.

City page will let you see projects, designers and works by the city. As you can see some city are more popular than others :)

Menu tab Jobs is designed to post and seek for jobs, create a resume from your uploaded works. I am yet to explore this tab, but it seems working similar to Dribbble Jobs section.

There are many sorts of competitions, events, online and offline activities in the Event tab. You can especially check out the Design competition section. Or you can even host one yourself for that matter.

A tab with some cryptic name Hellorf is turn out to be a stock website, a one-stop genuine visual content trading platform, authorized content including pictures, videos, music, fonts, etc., is the brand of Station Cool. I suppose similar to Adobe Stock.

This what I will be exploring next, I guess :)

The last section in the menu on top is Courses. Similar to the stock section it is not directly a ZCool section, but rather a subsidiary of some sort. For the obvious reason, I did not spend much time there since … Chinese is not my strongest subject :)

There is an interesting section called TOP (hides behind ••• the menu). It will show you, top 100 projects for the past week with a history, week by week. I was once Number One in there :) for one of my projects, which is pretty z cool I guess.

You might narrow your search in a specific field and you will be presented with TOP 10 category projects.

There are also top ranking for articles, as well, because you can upload both Projects or Articles to Zcool (I will talk about it later).

FYI Zcool ranks work by the algorithm. The reference includes but not limited to on numbers of reading, recommendation, favorite, sharing and the Zcool community recommendation

Under ••• also hiding a Designer and team section (similar to Dribbble), where you can see top artists and filter them by category or city. The more Popularity number you have the better your position on top of the list. I am not yet sure how popularity algorithm working though.

Profile

Now an interesting part — profile.

It’s slightly different from the one on Behance. You have followers and following, popularity score and credits. Popularity is basically your rank among other artists. But credits … honestly, I am not sure what it is. There is a page that explains how to get points, but no information oh what it’s for.

There are also profile with all usual suspects — Life (which is empty, perhaps if I would participate in an event it will be shown here), Timeline — basically months and year of joining and projects in a timeline manner, Collection tab for collections and Recommend which is liked or recommended projects by the author.

Now, what can you upload on ZCool and how?

You can upload either Project or an Article.

Projects

In the Project section, you can see familiar fields, however, it is not such an elaborate project’s creation tool such as Behance.

You can upload images and videos. And videos will be always on top of your projects.

I was not able to upload link to Vimeo or Youtube (I believe because of the Chinese firewall). They support only Yuku and Tencent video sites. So all video I upload was an actual .mp4 file.

Also when you uploading images there will be a gap between them which you can not eliminate. And on top of that, there is only 2 background color, white and black. So if you wish that your project look seamless prepare to sacrifice. But It took me about 5 minutes to modify my original Behance project and export it as a few separate jpegs and upload it to ZCool.

You can attach a zip file to the project as well. Suppose it’s a good idea if you promoting free items.

After posing your work there is seems to be no way to edit it, or at least I did find one, so be careful and check everything beforehand.

This is how videos will be stacked up on top. The text on top of video is your project description, not a part of images.

The cover and the project pixels size are very similar to Behance so you don’t need to adjust.

Article

An article section seems to be more dedicated to writing the posts with the ability to add video and pictures inside a text editor. I suppose you can be creative in there as well, but personally, I prefer an “old” way to create my design in PS and upload a full design work in jpegs. I only wish they allowed to insert videos to the place I want, not just stack them on top.

On the project page, on top, you get the usual things — recommendations, likes, comments, a number of views, dates of publication, a category of the project.

And you can see if your project was in the top selection of the week. Or has a recommendation icon.

Remember I tell you that Zcool translated their site to English (kinda), so I highly recommend to open site in Google Chrome. Yes, there is an English translation, but it’s partial and some pages are totally in Chinese, so automatic Google translation tool is a must. And as a bonus, you can see Google translate all the Chinese user names into English … it’s priceless (you will see)

ZCool also has an app for iOS and Android, but it’s in Chinese. I use it rarley just to check up on engagemnt.

Now, just to recap.

Within a month I get a lot more exposure to my project on the other side of the world. Since been on Behance for 8 years I get 8800 followers (generally 1100 a year, I guess) and I get 2700 in a month here, as well as recommended photographer badge (whatever it means:). I am not an attention seeker, I just point out the difference between the engagements on both platforms.

Now let me tell you my con’s and pros with this platform as a final touch:

Pro’s

- New market;

- A lot of projects are Chinese specific, and it’s fun to see a different world and get inspired by it;

- Better interactions (views, comments, likes);

- I get a few propositions from the potential buyers and companies, already;

- Overall increase exposure;

- Easy to upload an existing project to the platform;

- Be the first in your city to get more engagement and exposure.

Con’s

- Slow upload speed;

- Not everyone speaks English, so sometimes communication is difficult;

- Limited work presentation tools;

- Approval wait time for the project to appear on the website;

- Limited site translation;

- No international presence (however it could be a con as well).

So, do I recommend upload you work here?Yes, definitely. Do I think it will be a huge success and you get new customers and market? Maybe, only time can tell, but if you already made a project for your Behance portfolio, why not spend an additional 30 minutes and upload it here, you never know ..

Good luck!