1twentyeight — Brad Hamilton

My apologies for the last two test posts. In redesigning and re-imagining my site I wanted to be more deliberate about posting links to things I find interesting. Sometimes I’ll comment in detail, but more often I’ll simply link to the site and tell you in one sentence why you should visit. This new format (my linked list) makes the title of my post the link to the website you should visit.

There are two ways you’ll be able to recognize this type of post. One, look over at the date. If there’s a little chain-link icon then you’ll know the title of my post is the link to the website I’m talking about. The other visual indicator is the star (★) at the end of my post. By clicking the star you’ll be taken to the permalink for my post. This is helpful is you’re trying to reblog, or post a link yourself to my post.

And lastly, the RSS feed has been updated to mimic what I’ve just described. If I post a linked list article, the title in your RSS feed should take you directly to the other website, while the star will bring you to my original post.

Hope that makes sense. If not, shoot me question. And if you find that it’s not working for you let me know.

My inspiration for this type of linked list comes from sites like Shawn Blanc and John Gruber.

I really like Elliot’s latest redesign of his site. So clean and simple. I hope he keeps it for a while.

I’m ELLIOT JAY STOCKS and I’m a designer, illustrator, speaker, and author. I couldn’t stand my old site any longer, so I nuked it, and this little experiment is what arose in the aftermath. It’s (probably) not here to stay, but it’s designed to serve as a simple starting point that I’ll build upon in the months to come.

A new city. A new home. A new car. A new job (almost). And a new look for 1twentyeight. While I liked the previous design for my site I felt it was time to take it in a new direction. I’ve decided to move to a tumblog type format, with longer weekly articles, and more frequent updates with photos, quotes, and links to things I find interesting. My hope is that this prompts me to update the site on a more regular basis.

My family and I moved to Portland 2.5 weeks ago. We have embraced the city and have fallen in love with her already. We live in the Sellwood neighborhood and are now expert antiquers. We have toured the city. We have eaten its’ food, and drank its’ coffee. I’m already shopping for a commuter bike. The boy already has a Portland Timbers jersey. We think we’re going to like it here.

And I have things I want to write about. For the first time in quite a while there I things I feel like saying. I don’t pretend to think that they will be profound, but it will be me…all me.

So stay tuned. And if you’re in Portland let me know. I’d love to meet you.

Cheers.

I’ve spent the last several weeks agonizing over the redesign of my CommunityOne site. CommunityOne is a charity I established here in Cardiff in 2006. It was time for a fresh coat of paint. I also felt I needed to work on the branding a bit. I wanted something simple and clean, with fresh colors. I also wanted to experiment with new fonts, and using the new(ish) @font-face rule.

I decided to use the Inspire* theme from Woothemes as a base. I knew I wasn’t going to be using the theme’s slider, but I liked the overall look of the theme. I was able to get permission from an artist named Kol on deviantart to use his wallpaper “Grass Blades” as my background.

For the fonts I went with League Gothic in the logo and a few of the headings. I decided to use Museo Slab as the main body font and smaller headings. And there’s a little Bello that’s letterpressed into the header background. To use League Gothic and Museo Slab I decided to try out Typekit. It was really simple. I created a free account, added the two fonts to my kit, and was given the CSS and javascript to use.

I also decided to individualize the four services CommunityOne offers. These are now color based. This will help in distinguishing what we offer and with promotional efforts.

The CommunityOne Twitter feed is now tied to the site. And it now has an official RSS feed…both were lacking in the last design.

I’d love to here your feedback on the new look. I have a couple of minor things to add, but I feel good with the new result. And it should be noted, your mileage may vary if you view the site using Internet Explorer. Using IE7 the fonts will not look spot on, and there are a few issues with CSS background images. IE6 is not even worth mentioning. In my humble opinion, if you’re on a Windows based PC, go with Firefox or Safari.

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Three months, four posts, and now a re-design…sure, why not. I had great hopes for this site. I dreamt of it being a holding place for all things “me”. The dream is still there, but the thing about dreams…if you don’t get off your bum and do something with them they’ll just remain dreams. And so, I find myself busy with life, not giving to this site what I intended to give.

Then, after looking at it for a couple of months I decided I didn’t like the way it looked. So I set off on a search for a new look. I finally settled on the nice Bloggingstream theme by Woothemes. I’m not finished tweaking things. I still need to clean up the type and make sure some links are working properly. But for the most part things are as they should be.

So why should you care…because I’m ready to make the dream a reality. I’m ready to give to the site what I initially set out to give. If you’re still interested in following along and joining in then I welcome you.

And by the way, just because I’ve not been active here doesn’t mean I’ve not been active at all. Sometimes it’s just easier to post to Tumblr, and of course Twitter.