Michaelbox

 

I have too much free time to sit and think. I will never be able to deny that with my cur­rent job as a front desk offi­cer at a major bank. I can sit there for an entire shift and plot any­thing I want, in between the actual work. This time causes a lot of projects to be con­ceived and ideas for them to be con­sid­ered. Some projects are meant to help launch myself in this crazy graphic/web design world. Oth­ers are done because, damn it, I can! Let me tell you about some of them.

Per­sonal Website

Depend­ing on how much you pay atten­tion to Smash­ing Mag­a­zine, you may rec­og­nize the cur­rent michael­box theme as one they’ve posted on their web­site as a free­bie. I remem­ber at the time that I really wanted to have a func­tional web­site again, but had no orig­i­nal theme ready. Thus, I went with this one for the time being. One of my high­est pri­or­ity projects at the moment is an orig­i­nal theme for myself. This also allows me to work on the entire mockup process that I’ve never fully sub­merged myself in. I’m forc­ing myself to learn the process on the worst client possible…myself. While my mockup is still need­ing plenty of work to really be great, I must admit that I am lik­ing what I have so far. I will likely start ask­ing for peer reviews once I get some more of it done, so I’d appre­ci­ate any­one will­ing to help. The one detail that I am will­ing to divulge at the moment is that I am def­i­nitely break­ing away from a com­mon con­ven­tion of a web­site. Once it’s com­plete and imple­mented, I hope it tops off a very pro­fes­sional web­site that can show off with pride.

Designer Illus­trated

At some point ear­lier this year, I don’t recall when, I stum­bled onto the idea that cre­ative types are always, ALWAYS, cre­at­ing for oth­ers, but rarely get cre­ated for, out­side of their own per­sonal projects. It was at that point that I felt I could help change that fact. Cou­pling this with my strong inter­est in vec­tor art, I came up with what I named the “Designer Illus­trated” project. Once these details were fleshed out, I set out to find my first will­ing sub­ject. I asked around to some of my fol­low­ers on twit­ter, and had some peo­ple turn me down at the time. How­ever, the won­der­ful and lovely @gracesmith expressed will­ing­ness to par­tic­i­pate. I then pro­ceeded to obtain a photo from Grace as well as gather per­son­al­ity infor­ma­tion about her to work with. I recently had the illus­tra­tion at a point that I thought was at a qual­ity to present, but I decided to ask for some feed­back first. The feed­back given to me showed that it was too busy of a graphic and the cen­tral part of it was under-developed. I took the feed­back well and decided that it’s best to keep work­ing on it. I know that I want it to be awesome.

Unique Inter­view

Speak­ing of @gracesmith, she has also been kind enough to agree to an inter­view with me. For some rea­son, I felt that in graphic design­ers inter­views, the ques­tions always seem to be the same, and I wanted to present some­thing new and dif­fer­ent. I sent her my ques­tions ear­lier today. I am presently await­ing her reply and hope to have the inter­view posted some­time early next week. The ques­tions are a mix of humor and seri­ous­ness that I hope will be worth the read.

A very doubt­ful chicken

Last project that I am will­ing to leave you with in this post is my sec­ond domain. I just can not seem to pin­point a good use for cynicalchicken.net. One idea that keeps stick­ing around is a place for me to be a bit uncen­sored if the need arises. Michaelbox.net is meant to be my pro­fes­sional web­site and present me in the best pos­si­ble way. The other idea that I have is to turn it into a multi-author blog where a group of peo­ple could all make posts about a set range of top­ics. Nonethe­less, I am open to any ideas that some­one may have and will lis­ten to any sug­ges­tions for it.

With the projects listed above as well as more left unmen­tioned, and a 40hr/week job, things can tend to move a bit slow. How­ever, I hope to push these projects far and release them for every­one to see and appreciate.