Is it just me or do all the sites created by designers and ad agencies start to look the same after a while? A giant blur of super slick flash based professionalism that has all the personality of white noise. Not all sites are this way, there are exceptions of course.

This past month or so, as I was assembling my new version of this web site; trying to make my life simpler by combining bits and parts of other sites that I own, I kept reviewing what I liked and didn’t like about what I saw on the web and came up with a personal site plan for my own:

I am a blogger. There I said it. It is out and I am proud of it. Is it SOOOOO bad to have a real unvarnished face on your site that has not been combed and spit polished to the point where it is interchangeable with a dozen other sites? Most of my clients, who honestly don’t spend a lot of time here, say they see the sites point blank, laid back, casual frankness as a true reflection of me.

I do a lot of varied things. All of it is commercial art in one form or another. Somebody told me when I was in art school that I needed to specialize. I suspect that he was right. However, I make a darn good living (Well, from OK to darn good depending on the month) doing my version of commercial art. My version includes Illustration, some logo work, advertising design, some web work, teaching and sculpting. I know it doesn’t make sense. I know that it is an eclectic mish-mash of specialties. The people who do work for me often raise their eyebrows in disbelief when I explain what we are going to do next. But it is what it is, and I’m good at it. I’m not going to reinvent design as we know it, but I am having fun so get off my case about it already.

My portfolio is (and should) reflect all of the above. It should also be easy to update and annotate as well as to navigate. My portfolio before was laid out across the top of this page in various sections and was a bit of a pain to add things to and the scrolling was obnoxious. It was also centered around illustration, which was cool, it is a major portion of my business but it also limited me (see above). So I have unashamedly combined all my portfolios together. They are in clear sections under one tab and you can jump around at will. If you don’t want to see illustration or sculpting, don’t look at them. If you are looking for advertising but find yourself sneaking peaks at my illustration; I won’t tell, your secret is safe with me.

So what does this give us? Well, this site doesn’t have flash (not that I couldn’t have incorporated flash into it.) and I am OK with that. It doesn’t have all the spit and polish of a designer heavy site. I am OK with that too. The portfolio is eclectic which is a reflection of my studio, and I am OK with that.

It is almost exactly what I need. Which means I will be making little changes for months. But it is not your typical corporate motion media design site, with the inevitable “click here to enter” button at the bottom.

For all intents and purposes it is the anti-site. And I am OK with that most of all.