Dumbstruck: “Behind The Counter”
I have a bunch of great comics from December 2009 coming down the pipe for you soon. My family is always a great source of comic strip humor. As always, click the above image to view full-size.
BoHo Gets a New Website
BoHo Theatre website, 2007
For a change of pace, I’d like to showcase a web design with this post. I don’t design web sites nearly as often as I design printed material, but here’s a site I’m particularly proud of. It’s for BoHo Theatre, a company I’ve been part of for two years now, and been associated with for longer than that.
This project began when I finished acting in my second show with BoHo, The Tempest, back in 2008. At the time, their website was a drab, dreary affair which had fallen on hard times and wasn’t being properly maintained anymore. This was in stark contrast to my experience with the company as a vibrant producer of art populated with outgoing and colorful personalities. I volunteered to redesign the company’s website with the goal of making it truly reflect the vibrancy of their work.
BoHo Theatre website, 2010
I worked with the Artistic Director the create a design based on a grungy, bohemian-inspired collage style that seemed aptly suited to a company whose full legal name is the Bohemian Theatre Ensemble. I wanted something highly graphical, but also adaptable, with a modular sidebar that could add and remove content sections easily. The company loved it, and so did audiences. I’ve received heaps of praise for this design over the years and it has long held a prominent place in my portfolio. Soon after I completed it, the company invited me to join them as their Media Director.
Over the next two years, as I managed the website, I began to see its limitations. As we expanded and wanted to include new content, I had to recode it in places to accommodate such changes. There were many places where I wished the site was more legible, and the layout crisper and clearer. And when we brought on somebody who increased the use of the blog and other social media tools, the site wasn’t prepared to effectively highlight these additions.
BoHo Theatre website, 2012
So this winter, I took on the task of another redesign. I kept the aesthetic, because as I’ve also taken on the role of being the company’s resident Graphic Designer, this lush grungy style has become part of the company’s visual identity. But I shrunk the header and the sidebar to give more prominence to the content, and reworked the body to make the site more legible overall. I gave more prominence to the blog and social media, and included a place to highlight upcoming events. I also streamlined the file naming and organization system, and made strong connections to our Flickr and YouTube accounts. Perhaps this is more of a major facelift than a full redesign, but it was nonetheless a great opportunity for me to learn from my earlier missteps and continue growing a brand image.
The company is continuing to evolve, and I’ll be interested to see how I feel about this design in another two years’ time.
New Years Thank You Card
So December 2011 popped up suddenly and unexpectedly last year, arriving way earlier than I anticipated. I quickly found myself envious of these fancy designers I saw who had the time and resources to create beautiful holiday cards to send to their clients and prospective clients. I really wanted to do something similar, but I had way too many commitments to allow me the time to make something worthwhile. December passed in a flurry and I lamented my inability to get this simple task done.
By the time I got myself some vacation, it was the week of Christmas, at which point sending holiday cards is just embarrassing. In this downtime, though, I realized that what I really wanted to say in my holiday cards had nothing to do with Christmas, Hannukah, etc. What I wanted to do say to all my clients was thank you for their business and for allowing me to represent their brand. I have some great clients, and it’s because of them that I had a successful first full year as a professional freelancer. The appropriate holiday for that kind of retrospection, I decided, was actually New Years, and I totally had time to send cards for New Years!
By this point, however, I didn’t have the time or resources to create something big and fancy. What I did have lying around, however, was some leftover cardstock from when I published my own comics years and years (and years) ago. It’s a card stock that resembles cheap brown paper, a reference to the grab bag in my company name. And it’s legal size card stock, because I liked books that were 7″x8.5″. Have you ever tried to find legal size card stock? Good luck. And to find it in any kind of non-white color or pattern? It doesn’t exist. This stash I had special ordered from a paper supplier back in Georgia and had them cut it to legal size for me.
So I sat down and planned the card you see here, half a legal sheet (4.25″x14″), giving it two folds so that it not only had a fun reveal and plenty of space to write on, but would fit snugly into a standard 4 3/8″ x 5 3/4″ invitation envelope. I printed a batch of them on my home printer, hand-folded them, and wrote each of my clients a person note on the inside. I sent them all out just before New Year’s Eve. Since then, I’ve received nothing but smiles and reciprocated thank yous from the cards, proving that the whole enterprise was a success. The best part: I still have several sheets of the card stock left, and with a few tweaks of the art, I can whip up a non-holiday thank you note if I need one in a pinch.
