Diag 1: World’s Ugliest Logo?

The time had come to change my online portfolio. Previous editions were seperated into a FILM site and a Graphic Design site, as these are the two major things I do. At least, for a living. Both of these just sat on my server, with nary a change at all, since I relocated to Austin in July of 2007. But then, there was a little bit of extortion, and I was forced into action.

What’s Mine is Mine, bro!

One of my domain names had lapsed. Only a few days, but eitherway, I’d just simply forgotten to renew it. So I headed over to WHOIS, and typed in the URL, and lo and behold, it was still registered to me. I called the world’s largest, biggest, ugliest logo’d, and gaudily advertised domain registrar in the world, GoDaddy, and asked them what steps needed to be taken.

I figured there’d be a nominal fee, but considering they charge $8.99 for domain name registration, it couldn’t be more than $19.95 or similar, right? Wrong.

After a lengthy conversation, the representative informed me how my domain was now on “Redemption.” Which is a fancy way of saying, “You now have to pay us an additional $80 to get your domain name back!”

The representative told me she could instantly reinstate my domain, as soon as I gave her my credit card information. I asked what would happen if I refused to pay, she let me know it would have it’s 85 days of “Redemption” and then would go on auction. If no one wanted to buy my domain, well, then I could get it back.

I dunno. Doesn’t sound like much of a good deal to me. Maybe “Redemption Period” should be renamed “RipOff Period.”

MediaTemple…I Choose You!

GoDaddy was my registrar, as well as my host. As soon as this fiasco went down, i decided to switch my hosts over to somewhere new. I’d never really liked GoDaddy’s back-end or its administrative tools and how they operated. Plus, all of my email accounts were continually having problems. Everytime they’d be set up in a different email program, particularly Apple Mail and the iPhone, I’d be forced to change the password. And port numbers were never consistent.

After doing a little bit of searching, I wound up at MediaTemple. So far, so good. In particular, the ability to One-Click set-up various instances of WordPress alone has been fantastic. Upgrading is easy as pie as wel. Just click a link, and voila - upgrade. Hopefully things will continue to go well.

New Server, New Design, Oooh La La!

One of the toughest parts of deciding to create a new design for an online portfolio is how far do you go? You’ve got to remember at all times that there will be various different colors, different photos, images, and whatnot added to the site at any give time. That is, if you update like you’re supposed to. To help with the latter, I’m using WordPress. I can’t imagine how updating could be any easier to this. With WordPress also comes the addition of a Blog Client, and that’s fun, since I seem to never run out of things to say.

On the former, though, I started off with a simple, very subdued design: a blueish mountainscape, the logo, and that’s pretty much it. But as I started to build things, I realized I wasn’t happy with it. Nothing stood out, nothing felt particularly distinctive about it, and I had to do something. Though, I knew I didn’t want to just dive back into my bag of tricks.

All designers have a pool of easy to implement styles, treatments and whatnot which they love to use, because they like the way they look and are nearly second nature in terms of how to put them on a page. This I couldn’t have though. I had to find something that maybe fit my style, and that I certainly have, but was also very much different than what I’d done before.

Diag 2: Draw with Pixels

So I whipped out my Wacom tablet. Who knows how many of these things I’ve owned over the years. From the Graphire to an off-brand with less levels of sensitivity. I never got used to using it, no matter how hard I tried. But lately, I’d found myself using it for layer masks, for making very quick, easy gradients or adding slightly glowing aspects to elements on pages.

I started hand-drawing a sun. Then a rainbow. Then some clouds. Then my design suddenly made sense and most importantly, didn’t look like other work I’d completed. Now that doesn’t mean from now on I won’t work hand-drawn elements into designs if it works. I can think of a few projects coming down the line - from web design to titles or other motion projects - that could be served well by the addition of more organic elements.

Alright, so that’s my first post. Now the long, long, long process of adding my content and work back into this portfolio. Hopefully, by using WordPress for the backend, I’ll be able to set up some standards which will make changing the design in the future far easier. Boy. That’d be nice!

Q out.