Version Six

There was a time long ago in a galaxy far, far away when I was very proud of my strange and quirky personal space on the web. It was a testing ground for new techniques, a sandbox for experimental ideas, and most importantly, it was my own. I didn’t really care what anybody else thought about what I was doing, I just wanted a place to do my thing. When I wrote, I did so primarily for my own recollection. When I made changes to the back-end structure of my site, it was mainly to teach myself new tricks.

This sense of exploration came partially from my own fascination with the Web itself, but it was also inspired by the work of the many web designers I followed. I loved to design, I loved seeing what other people were designing and I loved tinkering with HTML and CSS. It wasn’t long before I turned my focus outwards. I still posted random personal things from time to time, but I started trying to write about topics that would benefit the community that I had learned so much from. This quote from Curt Cloninger’s 2001 book: Fresh Styles for Web Designers really summarizes the aspirations I had for my site at that time.

“When they’re not working on their day jobs, most top-notch web designers are pushing the web design envelope after-hours or on their own personal sites -manipulating current technologies and expanding the medium’s design vocabulary.” – Curt Cloninger

I really felt, for a while, that I was living that quote. My site always reflected my current design ideals and even though I still posted goofy content, it was always fresh. It was that period in the life of this site that led to feature articles, a successful book, and many other awesome opportunities. Somehow, somewhere along the way though I neglected the very sense of exploration that afforded me all those opportunities.

After nearly 3½ years with the same design, I’m proud to finally be releasing version six of jasongraphix.com. I’ll post more in the coming weeks about the redesign process, but for now I’m just eager to get it out here. I also want to give credit to Kyle Neath for the Hemingway WordPress theme that served as the structural foundation for my redesign, Nathan Smith for the 960 Grid System sketch sheets and Photoshop templates that helped me get things started, and all the other web designers out there who keep this industry from getting boring.