ZURB acquires Forrst from COLOURlovers to build a “strong, active” design and development community

Product design firm and creator of tools like Notable and Verify, ZURB, has acquired Forrst, a design and development community founded in 2010 that was previously acquired by COLOURlovers in mid 2012.

This is an interesting development for both companies involved, as ZURB has played an important role as a service provider in the Web and interaction design space for quite some time. The company is only now diving into the social side however, and the results of this move are certainly worth keeping an eye on. Similarly, as COLOURlovers focuses on monetization with Creative Market, ZURB may be able to breathe new life into Forrst’s network for designers and developers.

To that end, ZURB is taking the helm of Forrst and its 50,000 users without the community’s original founder, Kyle Bragger, although ZURB tells us he will remain “an active community participant” on the site.

ZURB has shared its intentions of this acquisition with us, detailing that it aims “to create an active, engaged design community focused around detailed design feedback.” The company’s plans are as follows:

• We will actively listen, participate, and foster the site to build a strong, active Forrst community.

• With a suite of design apps, a top-20 open-source framework (Foundation) and over 15 years of product design experience, we’re excited to lead the Forrst community forward to achieve great things. We’ll start by streamlining the site interface and implementing responsive design for the mobile web.

• We’ll iterate upon and add new Forrst features to help designers and developers collaborate easily and effectively. The invite system will shift to reward users who make consistent, high-quality contributions to the site.

Forrst has served an interesting role in the design and development community over the past two years, and certainly still has a dedicated set of core users. The service differentiates itself from Behance and Dribbble by focusing on detailed, constructive feedback.

We’ve covered tons of ZURB’s products in the past, including:

Bounce, Clue, Verify, Strike, Notable, Reel, Spur and Axe.

Image credit: Stockbyte / Thinkstock