tyHATCH / Notebook

This is another old note to myself…

This is a loaded area to explore. I enjoy so many different visual styles that it’s really hard to settle down to one particular style. Doing some sort of mash up would be an exercise that I should try. Let me see if I can get out some of my likes so I can better articulate what I’d like to accomplish visually.

• Web 2.0 look—nice smooth gradients. At times they appear candy-like.
• Minimal grunge—clean lines with only hints of grunge.
• Typographic beauty. sIFR is what I want to use, if it’ll work for me and I can understand it correctly.
• Minimal and colorful. Energetic colors and a minimal use of visual elements. This probably is something that falls into the Web 2.0 look. But I really like a smart use of color.
• Patterns. patterning of some sort to help bring interest into the dead parts of the page and highlight the content.
• Flexible. I want to make the layout work with small screens and monster cinema displays.
• Pixel art. Yummy raster goodness can’t be beat.
• Icons. There’s some killer icon design going on right now. I want to make some of my own.

That’s most of what I like. It’s a pretty inclusive list that spans all sorts of aesthetic tastes. My challenge is to reconcile them into something that is uniquely me. Something that I can tweak and modify over a much longer period of time.

One of the hardest things is to design for yourself. (Future post…) I’ve been trying off and on for the past 2 years or so to come up with something that I like. Actually have gotten close a couple of times to launching something new, only to scrap it for one reason or another. When I get time, I’ll post a couple of ditched designs.

This is an old note to myself…

Turns out I’m trying to redesign my site without really nailing down some sort of content plan and/or strategy. Breaking one of the biggies of web design by jumping into this without first figuring out a few things like:

• What will I write about? Just design? No, I have many other interests that I’d like to post on.
• How will I promote the site? At this point, until I have the redesign complete, I’m not going to. Any traffic I get will be organic and who knows, maybe it’ll grow over time…?
• Site organization/architecture/maintenance. It’s pretty straightforward: Blog, Portfolio, Contact… I’m really looking to simplify what I have in an effort to make maintaining the site more manageable. Right now one big flash file just doesn’t cut it (and it’s been languishing for the better part of 3 years as I haven’t made the time to update it… Life has other demands that take higher priority over the portfolio site. That’s another post.)

What I think I’m really struggling with is figuring out how to handle the site’s content and what my strategy is.

Here’s a quick recounting of what I’ve been thinking:

URL: duh…

Features/purpose:

1. Showcase my graphic design ability for freelance work.
2. I’d also like to make it more of a place for me to express my thinking on what I do, etc. Sort of a destination for me. I’d like to have some tutorials, basic design discussion and life in general sort of categories.
3. I’m also keen on having a way to feature imagery from my sketchbook on a semi-regular basis.
4. Provide some sort of way for me to tap into either Google or Yahoo ads. (Still up in the air as to which one would be more lucrative, but also which one is more flexible, etc.? I’m leaning towards Yahoo merely because Google wants to index everything… It’s a philosophical thing.)
5. Other affiliate advertising… I think it’ll have it’s place, but I’m not sure where. Maybe links to books and music? (Does iTunes have an affiliate?)
6. Bio information. Right now I feel like I don’t sum up my professional self well-enough. Perhaps I can work on something that’s better.
7. Resume acces. PDF, RTF, Word and HTML? Too much? Probably. Better to narrow it down to PDF and HTML.
8. Modular and updateable. I want to learn things as I work on the site. I’ve neglected it for much too long and it’s time to remedy that.

Positioning:

That’s a tough one for me. I am a graphic designer and I focus on print and web work. I enjoy them both and also enjoy technology. But the technology I think hampers my doing things. I’m too busy looking at and not doing. I need to figure out some way to get past that. Perhaps it’s as simple as unhooking myself from the sites I frequent. Newsvine is a terrible timesink for me. I can spend hours there….

Back to the task at hand… Off to do a bit of research so I can better determine how to position myself and my site.

Hi. Thanks for coming. Please pardon the mess as I’m right in the middle of working on a redesign. I have been keeping some personal notes to myself in Backpack lately and came to the realization that since I’m going to be participating in the online design community, I might as well share something that might help people.

Here’s the plan: I’m going to transfer my notes, fairly unedited, over to here. As I’ve been feeling somewhat isolated from like-minded folk with how I work–due to my working as an in-house designer–my desire is to discuss my work and expand my personal and professional network, be it designers, writers, illustrators or lurkers-like me.

Hopefully, we can engage in a bit of constructive conversation from time to time that will help me to grow. In any case, I’m hoping that by sharing the process I go through from very rough (and believe me it’s rough) beginnings to “final” design (is anything ever really final online anymore?) I’ll provide something of value to you my reader.

So bear with me for a while, hopefully you’ll see something that inspires you and I’ll gain a few new friends. One small caveat: it’s going to be rather ugly for a while as I’ll be squeezing the redesign in as time permits.