FourBux

Tagged, graphic design style

So, Tara over at Graphic Design Blog tagged me into revealing five design-related things about myself. Since I am a designer by day, and write just as a hobby, this may seem a bit disjointed. So what else is new, right?

What is something that would surprise people about you and design?
When I went into college, I had a double major of Sociology and Communications. As I worked my way into my art classes, I fell in love with the computer and the abilities it afforded me, but even after I changed my major, I didn’t want to be a designer, I wanted to be an illustrator. I had a freelance illustration business in college, and learned pretty quickly that it will be tough to make a living on the occasional illustration job, so I decided to broaden my field. My grandfather was a graphic designer in the 60’s, before the title even really existed, and I guess I just inherited his artistic outlook on life.

If you could design one blogger’s site for free, who would it be?
Geez. There’s a couple ways to read this question, and I keep coming back to the bad way, as in, which blog do I read that I hate the layout enough to redesign it. I’m sure that’s not the spirit of the question. So, I’ll position it this way: if I had the opportunity, I’d design a blog for some up and coming actor or musician. I think that would be a cool way to help them connect to the fans as well as a great portfolio piece along the way.

What blog platform do you prefer, and why?
So far, I’ve had the most experience with Wordpress, and it seems to be the one most infinitely scaleable and manageable, if you have a self-hosted site. Going with a WP subdomain (fourbux.wordpress.com, for instance), seem to be really limiting. You can’t beat free, though.

Aside from your own, what is your favorite blog theme/template?
Being relatively new to the whole blogging theme thing, my favorites are some of the easy ones to pick out. I like the Copyblogger theme, but also like the Blog Oh Blog theme for the functionality and flexibility. The one I started with was the Vanilla Mist theme and modify the CSS from there. I just don’t want to have to recreate the wheel, so I have no problem giving credit if it allows me to stand on the shoulders of someone else. I also like the artistic qualities of the Santigwar theme, but have yet to use it on any projects.

Do you have a blog-reading guilty pleasure?
They’re all somewhat of a little guilty pleasure for me. I learn a little bit from everything I read, and not just the design-based blogs. Sometimes I feel like I’m reading someone’s journal, while other times I just jump from commenter to commenter to get a feel for what people in a certain circle are like.

At this point, I’m supposed to tag another five designers with the goal of propagating this meme. Since I don’t know any other designers well enough yet to hit them up for this, for now I’ll have to leave this part blank. At some point I’ll fill this in.

Thanks Tara!