Andy Laub they call me "The Solution"

I launched version 14 of this site, officially, on May 1, 2007. That seems like a really long time ago, especially by my standards. I’m not sure how long I expected it to last back then, but I knew that I was pretty happy with it, especially considering how quickly it all went together.

Comparing the launch version to version 13 before it, it’s not hard to see what I felt was working and what wasn’t. A good portion of the content styles and graphic elements made it to the new site unscathed, while dropping the heavy-handed and overly divided feel of the previous design.

The Grid

Version 14’s major defining element was the grid based entirely on the Flickr photos at the top. Initial versions had nine 75px columns separated by 5px alleys, and in November 2008 I added a tenth. While it’s not a new thing for me to have grids defined by the size of my images (as evident in all of my site designs back when this was purely a photoblog), this was the first time I gave myself more than four columns to play with, and I really enjoyed that flexibility. I think the layout worked even better on pages where the Flickr photos weren’t visible; there was still a strong sense of grid and organization, but without the obvious indication of where it was all coming from.

Content Separation

The other major stylistic decision was the way status/blip/link posts were presented when compared to the regular journal entries. After experimenting with different options I ended up with the meta for the posts in the center column, while short posts would live on the right and full posts on the left. It worked best when it was populated evenly, but there were many times where compulsive Twittering would leave the home page entirely empty on the left column.

Then & Now

So how does this newest version compare to the outgoing iteration? You can see that while I haven’t done much with it yet, the grid concept remains intact.

In terms of visual carryover, though, that’s about it. The overall look of the new site was influenced heavily by those wallpapers I just did and my portfolio. I continue to use Helvetica for the headers, but I’ve moved back to Lucida for the body copy, which harkens all the way back to Version 8.x, as ever since then I’d pretty much used Helvetica for everything.

The dotted lines, which I have dearly loved for a very long time, are hanging on by a thread. Because I’m not using a white on white on white layout this time around, everything is divided by blocks of color and shading, which means borders as a whole just aren’t necessary.

Finally, the Status/Twitter posts have become the foremost bit of information on the new site, with Flickr taking the slot below that and the Journal even further down. This just seemed like the only way it could work, organizationally. I didn’t feel that the Flickr content was deserving of the most prominent spot on the page, and the Journal couldn’t be at the top simply because of length. As-is, most visitors should see all three sections when they visit and be inclined to scroll down. Or everybody reads this in RSS, in which case it doesn’t matter anyway.

All that said, I’m quite happy with this latest version, and I’m most interested to see what it evolves into as time progresses.

Bear with me; I’m going to head back to theatre-nerd reference land for a minute. I mentioned a few times that I was just in Gypsy, a show about a young girl who is pushed into burlesque and stripping by her overzealous, fame-seeking mother. There’s an exchange in the show between one of the strippers at the theater and the daughter in which the daughter explains that she “can’t be a stripper because she has no talent.” To which the stripper responds, “to be a stripper all you need to have is no talent.”

To be a designer all you need to have is no talent. Stop and think about that for a second. How many terrible designers do you know? People that have no artistic skill whatsoever but still manage to extract the dollars from desperate clients who don’t know that there’s a better act just down the street.

Near the end of the show, the daughter has accepted stripping and become quite famous for it. She makes a statement during her act about being an “ecdysiast”, or one who sheds its skin, and exclaiming that “at these prices, I’m not a stripper; I’m an ecdysiast!”

With that in mind, there are plenty of truly talented designers out there, and as is often the case, they have higher rates. But at the same time, you’ll find designers charging like they’re ecdysiasts when they’re not, and vice versa. Such is life on the internerd: anybody can claim to be anything.

I was putting a thing together at work today which, among other things, was featuring a new vendor of ours, ipath. Because of this, I ventured over to their site to check it out, and it is good. There is a section where people can send pics of their ipath shoes. One week, however, they were pretty light on images so they just took random photos of their office, which is probably the funniest thing ever – you don’t generally expect to see “isn’t this the coolest printer ever?” on an action sports site. Also notable, since I’m in this groove, is Alpinestars, as well as Seven2, whose initial ads (which are awesome) had no url on them so for a long while I didn’t even know what they were for. And finally, go get this magazine because it’s cheap and interesting.

I saw this movie/music thing somewhere and figured I’d do it too*:

• opening credits: Never Gonna Give You Up Cake
• dreaming / waking up scene: How It Should Be (Sha Sha) Ben Kweller
• happy friends scene: Bohemian Like You the Dandy Warhols
• driving scene: Hunter Björk
• action/fight scene: Horndog Overseer
• car chase: Date With The Night Yeah Yeah Yeahs
• happy love scene: Hotel Yorba the White Stripes
• mellow scene: Float On Modest Mouse
• sex scene: Stellar Incubus
• angry / bitter scene: Gone Ben Folds
• breakup scene: A Mistake Fiona Apple
• evil / revenge scene: Shiver Maroon 5
• contemplation scene: In Other Words Ben Kweller
• sad / breakdown scene: Look What You’ve Done Jet
• death scene: Flying High Jem
• funeral scene: Winter Tori Amos
• nostalgic scene: The Scientist Coldplay
• closing credits: Supreme Robbie Williams

*If you don’t already have iTunes, you live a sad, sad life.