I launched the redesign of this website and blog last weekend (Friday, July 24, 2009). It was a long process, and here are a few screenshots detailing the design and development.

Objective

If you’ve been following my previous site and blog you may ask, “Why, Josh, did you redesign your site?”. I guess the short answer is, I wanted to. Being a designer/illustrator it’s really hard to be satisfied with my work for an extended period of time. I guess that’s one luxury of client work: when it’s done and delivered IT’S DONE. I can’t go back and change what bothers only me. However, in order to actually justify spending time redesigning my site I established three objectives:

1. I wanted the site to be very functional
2. I wanted to completely get rid of Flash
3. l wanted it to be a fun place to visit

Design Process

The initial concept included a very fun, quirky spirit with a heavily illustrated barnyard scene. While the “barnyard” imagery became very minimal throughout the development, I maintained the spirit and brightness that I set out to achieve (although you’ll see from my EWWW comps that it was a process). Above is the initial sketch. The idea was to have a cow illustrating a dramatic rooster. The drawing was going to be very cartoony, while the rooster very over dramatic. Added some character to the cow. It’s getting there. Read More »

This is my first official post of my newly released WordPress blog! Just want to say welcome everyone. I guess I’ll post a new Illustrator sketch illustration. Lately I’ve been paying close attention to cartoonist/illustrator Bob Ostrom’s blog, How 2 Draw. He’s been playing around with scanning in inked lines, then coloring them in Adobe Illustrator, giving them a very hand-done look (see Bob’s blog post here). Whoa!! — Real inking on real paper?! There’s a concept. I did a little experiment myself, and here it is. Thought I’d share. I like where this look is going. Maybe I’ll continue with it. I’ll also be posting this on iStockPhoto. UPDATE: To purchase the rights to use this stock illustration click here. UPDATE #2: I forgot to mention that this blog was created using a tutorial from the Web Designer Wall.

I’ve been pretty silent lately when it comes to updating this blog. Mainly because I’ve been hard at work redesigning my website (initially posted about it here). I wanted to post a quick update to my progress. It’s coming along great. I’m very excited about this new look and functionality, and I’m thrilled that I’ll be completely dumping Flash!! Also in the works is an iPhone-friendly version. Here are some tease shots. Hopefully I’ll be able to post a link to the complete “beta” site version sometime next week. I will also be redesigning this blog. This presents some dilemmas. I get a lot of compliments on my current design, which I like. However, I need to have my blog fit the identity of the new site. So, I’ll have to work that out. I’m also debating switching the blog over to WordPress, although figuring out how to transfer all the feed info and stuff sounds like a headache. We’ll see. I’ll also have to figure out how to design a custom blog with WP (something I need to know anyways). So, stay tuned. As always you can keep up with the blog by subscribing via RSS, or signing up to receive updates via email. How fun is that! UPDATE 7/25/09: This post was originally written on my old blog. As of 7/24 my new site and blog has been released.