Posts Tagged ‘blog’

The terminology of Shopaholic doesn’t seem to apply to most men, and so I will understand your surprise in finding the word “shopaholic” on the title above.

But afraid not, I’m not about to start rumbling about psychological analysis on men spending nature, but instead introduce to you to an online shop and a newly setup blog that run and managed by my dear friend Mira and Cynthia.

It would be a classic for me to introduce the girls’ blog and shop by telling you the story and the nitty gritty  behind their venture, but of course I won’t give you the satisfaction of proving you right (since you can read about it anyway on their “about” section), nor that I would make you happy by pretending that I know things about women’s fashion.

So what I would recommend you to do is simply visit their blog (www.shopaholicjakarta.com) and their online store (www.shopaholic.us.com) and find your self what they have to offer. Enjoy and happy shopping !!!

p.s. Girls, you’ll be better judge than I do. Boys, you can make your girls significantly happier by acquiring some of the items on their shop

Dear friends,

Have I ever told you ? That once upon a time, long time before I was banker, and sometimes in between my role as a chef, I was a graphic designer ? Well, not the best one out there but certainly a decent one. At the very least,  it paid for my living cost for quite sometime.

Anyhow, couple of weeks ago, I stumbled upon this website called fudgegraphics, and I thought, wow this blog is pretty ! And the best thing of all, the guy by the name Franz Jeitz design it himself. And then I thought, why don’t I redesign my own blog me self ? Well, I know it’s not going to be easy, but it’s worth trying.

And so I started the process by designed the blog starting by creating my own brand. Now quite frankly, it’s not that difficult, because already have something in my mind, I didn’t go through the usual process of logo design that I used to went through for my customer. Oh well, may be I did it, but in a very subconscious way.

The name simplenotch, comes from idea that once upon a time in your life, you stumbled upon incident that changes your life, or how you lived your life ? My blog exactly represent several  things that changed after these “incidents” (the long story will follow sometimes). This incidents represented as a notch, a mark that tainted your life hopefully in a good way. This notch, is more then just a mark, it’s also a stepping place for us to climb up the otherwise step and slippery wall of life.

So what ever thing that comes it should a have a notch, a chip on it, triangular empty space where it looked that someone has just whacked it with axe or something like that. I came out with various media where I could put the notch in (as you can see), before I finally set with a simple[n]otch. It was derived for [s]implenotch, but after a consult with my dear friend Mira of Shopaholic (who thought that the notched squared is to corporeity), we agreed that it make a lot more sense to put the [ ] in the [n] instead.

The evolution of design

I considered several typeface, including the almighty Helvetica. But considering that not many all pc’s have Helvetica in it, and not many people can differentiate the difference between Helvetica and Arial anyway, and even those Helvetica lover and Arial hater are still using Arial as a content typeface, I settled with Arial instead. As for the color ? Well, I simply love blue, but to put it straight, I intend the color to change over time, adjusting to the mood and seasons we are in.

The final logo, and its variation

Once the logo ready and I’m happy and satisfied with, designing the blog was not an issue. I used Artisteer to generate the majority of back script for the WP blog, but toning and customizing each design components quite manually me self. Including adding some script in the header and footer.

This is my first own designed WP template, so it’s a working progress. And yes, I’m pretty nervous when I uploaded to server. But hey, it turned out to be just fine !!! Sure, I did some tweak again here and there, and will continuously do so. So expect some changed in time to come.

So, how do you like my new brand and blog design ?

Just want to let you now, I just added link list of blogs on the right side of these page (akhlis, devishanty, glistersandblisters, hning asia, omglolwtf). These blogs are authored by my newly found friends on the blogger community. They were young, creative and very productive, and each of them offers a unique and interesting perspective.

Naturally, their pieces are very colorful and much enjoyable to read, which is why I visit their pages almost daily.

Now I would love to entice you by summarizing their idea in short sentence, but I feel that whatever comments that I write about them, will never do them justice. And to this affect, I encourage you to visit them, and see what they offer.

For other blogger friends who want to exchange link, I would be very happy to do so, just let me know

Cheers !!!