Well, I’d like to say that I was relaxing on the beaches of Mazatlan, Mexico, sipping on margaritas. Unfortunately, that isn’t the case. In fact, considering my net worth, I wouldn’t be able to survive alone even in Mexico.

Invaded by Aliens

Ok so, I wasn’t invaded by aliens. I was hacked. I don’t know how and I don’t know why but, malicious code was inserted into my theme files. After doing some research, I found a couple of ways that something like this could’ve happened; all my fault.

I’m not one to advertise many services but throughout this whole problem, I’ve really come to love hosting with Go Daddy. They called immediately to inform me that I had been hacked and that I needed to restore the files on my server. Most say that Media Temple is the best place to host yet, they always seem to have server issues. I have never had a problem with my hosting, domain or email. Their customer service is top notch and their prices are excellent.

In the end, I decided to remove everything from the server and start from scratch. When I was hacked, I was unhappy with the design. The vibe and style was inconsistent, however, I’ve tried very hard to change that with this version of the site. Thanks to the guys at Obox for convincing me that websites should have a style guide too.

Sparkling New Design

It was an interesting challenge to create a design that was a pleasure on the eyes, easy to navigate and at the same time highly customizable; a challenge I believe I met well.

An all new monogram was created and is now being used across the web.

Like I mentioned before, the design of the site was very inconsistent. Interestingly, a lot of the inconsistencies were found in small places that you probably didn’t notice but, irritated me.

For example: the borders. Sometimes I had solid, sometimes they were dotted and other times they were doubled. It made no sense. Now, their is a hierarchy. Solid borders are used to separate columns and dotted borders are used to separate items within these columns.

Columns are separated by solid borders and list items are separated by dotted borders.

The call to action color is yellow. When you see yellow around the site that means I’m trying to draw your eyes to a specific area. In the old site, I had a weird mixture going on, of yellow, red, black and white. The new site combines different shades of gray with the beautiful accent of yellow.

Yellow, being such a bright color, is used to make things stand out and draw your attention.

Another thing that was changed was the code. I tried to eliminate as many unnecessary divs and tried to minimize the many pointless class types that all achieved the same effect.

I also made the content area bigger. Now the site is 800px wide however, it still runs on a 7-column grid in order to be flexible for art directed posts.

Refining the Purpose

When I first bought this domain name, it was supposed to be solely for my portfolio. However, when creating this new version of the site, I seriously considered trashing that section of the site.

Back in January, I set out to experiment with the Art Direction and that has become the main purpose of this site. I can almost guarantee that some of these pages are going to look horrible but, it’s an experiment and because of that, it doesn’t really bother me much.

You’ll notice that the articles usually won’t talk about design. The reason for that is, there are so many places where I can write and report on the design industry. In contrast, the only place I can talk about my favorite music, my hobbies, my opinions and other core parts of my life are here. It’s nice to write about something and then learn the different angles and perspectives that people have.

Wrapping Up

Now, here I am, almost four months since my last article, ready to start fresh. All of my previous blog posts were deleted, so only my favorites of the previous collection will be re-posted.

I invite you to peruse the site. Visit the different pages and please feel free to tell me what you think. Whether it’s to critique or compliment, your opinions are welcome.

Thank you all for your continued support and for thinking that my rants, raves and ramblings are interesting. I’m having fun and I hope that you’re enjoying this experiment as much as I am.