bookmark_borderMyspace Neon Dream 2008 and Beyond

In between rage cleaning the house while listening to Metallica’s Orion on repeat, I stumbled upon a gif with my custom graphics; it was a repeating background of my first tiger tattoo, a scanned drawing of my angel bunny and a rose I traced over a real photo in Photoshop that I would use for Myspace (IYKYK) back in the early 2000’s. I honestly don’t even know how I did this but of course, I animated it. I also looked through the layers and found an old screenshot and a customized contact box, lol.

Customizing my Myspace profile was how I started to learn web design; because I was so obsessed with my profile looking original, I would always tinker with the custom CSS code so I can make it look however I wanted. And then I would make a custom background and someone would steal it. Good times, lol.

I really miss blogging and reading my friends’ thoughts. I miss Roxy and the OTP crew.

bookmark_borderSHERMGRAFIK Website Screenshots

It used to be so fun, challenging and also frustrating building websites; I was so obsessed about how mine looked and I was constantly tweaking it. The site was built in HTML via Dreamweaver, I was using iframes and tables to align elements. At the time, everybody was doing it that way.

Then WordPress came out.

All this reminiscing came about because I was thinking about Futura 2000’s website around 2004 when I started learning web design.

His website stood out to me because it was very experimental and out there. Everybody was using Flash to make their website graphics interactive.

However, I didn’t learn how to code actual HTML until 2014.

So yeah, before I switched to Save the Savages – Shermgrafik was my first ever domain.

Want to take a trip down www memory lane? You can see old versions of websites at Internet Archive.

bookmark_borderGoodbye to My Dark Colored Website

Hello dark type on white background! I’ve been resisting this for quite sometime now, I just really, really prefer white type on black background. I don’t just like black, I LOVE IT. I feel protected when I wear black, vulnerable & exposed when I wear white (like I just know I’m going to get some kind of food stain on me & I’ll be upset for the rest of the time); not sure how I can relate that to website readability & color but anyways! Just seems like every freakin website I visit now is a template or has a white background; don’t get me wrong – it’s nice & clean, but everything looks the same.

But from reading a few things online a lot of people say that most prefer to read on a white background, especially if it’s text heavy. Something to do with astigmatism too.

Luckily with this WP theme along with my CSS skills I was able to compromise – my logo up top sits on a black background, it looks more striking that way. That’s enough for me & makes me happy.

Yup, if you are an artist/designer like me, you would get nitpicky and obsessive about this kind of stuff too.

If you are having a hard time deciding, this old article on The Do’s and Don’ts of Dark Web Design might help you decide.

p.s. I am aware that comments aren’t working right now. I’ve been trying to figure it out so bare with me. Thanks for reading!