New Logo & Other Nerdy Stuff

Any graphic designers or web designers in the crowd? Any crowd? Maybe I’m just writing to myself at this point. Have you ever drawn, painted or designed something and been pleased with your efforts in the moment? Then some time later you wonder how you were satisfied and think it looks like crap? Happens to me all the time, and probably most artists or designers can relate.

I don’t necessarily hate my previous designs, as there is a “history” embedded in everything we create. An aspect of story or a step along one’s journey is captured in the visual choices we make today, last year, and back when we were children. Just like you can remember what your childhood bedroom or living room carpet, couches and curtains looked or felt like, everything we see, hear, taste and touch forms a memory attached to a particular moment in time.

Even so, tastes change, and sometimes that means we look back with distaste or even embarrassment for stylistic choices of the past. This is often the case for me when I look at my designs, except I no longer care about the embarrassment thing. When I’m in graphics tinkering mode I have to force myself to declare something “finished” or else I’ll nitpick font choices, colors, bezier curve shapes and node positions endlessly!

After launching this website in a more public manner, I started revisiting all the visual design elements, as I cannot help but do so. Something about my logo and fonts annoyed me, so I tinkered with them again yesterday and today (primarily because of the Affinity discovery… keep reading below).

Warning: nerdy stuff about to start…

Earlier this year I installed Linux, as I’m no longer happy with the direction the major software companies are headed. It feels very dystopian to me what the big corporations are doing. A little software and operating system independence goes a long way toward feeling free or disconnected from the decay of corporate greed and “progress” for the sake of invasiveness, price gouging, and control. Don’t get me started.

I used to be a Windows guy, simply because that was what I grew up with. I’ll never be a Mac/iPhone guy, as I find their products and ecosystem overly hyped and cultish (not to mention overpriced). Yes, I’m aware they make fine products. The logical choice after Windows 10 died off felt like “anything but Windows 11 is fine.” So I installed a few Linux distributions. I have played with Linux a few times in the past and always enjoyed the experience. These days many Linux distributions like Ubuntu, Linux Mint and Pop!_OS have matured to the point where you no longer have to write in assembly code or ones and zeros just to get basic things done. I am fairly confident that even non-nerdy people could switch to Linux and barely notice anything amiss nowadays. Nerdy people would absolutely thrive after such a switch, as Linux is built by and for nerds!

The only thing I missed after switching from Windows to Linux was good design software. GIMP and Scribus are very annoying to use, especially after many years with access to the finest software known to mankind. Inkscape is a decent piece of software, but it has a few shortcomings. Affinity, on the other hand, is currently the best software designed by humankind for any kind of design work. You were expecting me to say Adobe? Nope, gross.

Guess what? Just a few days ago, Canva, the new owner of Affinity (after buying out UK-based Serif), released Affinity Studio… for FREE! What was once a suite of three separate products – Affinity Designer, Affinity Photo and Affinity Publisher – is now all rolled into one product: Affinity Studio. It’s quite revolutionary, a level of integration that Adobe and even Corel are probably face-palming over. And did I mention it’s free? Ditch Adobe. Use Affinity. Reclaim your creative freedom and a much fatter wallet.

Sad news is that Affinity products are not made for Linux: just Windows, Mac and iPad. However, through nerdy hacking and a brilliant Youtube tutorial I discovered a way. I now have Affinity Studio running on Linux! Now Windows has nothing for me that I can possibly miss. Back before my 360 camera suddenly died, I would have missed Insta360 Studio for editing those giant videos. One less thing to worry about.

All that to say, thanks to being able to finally use good design software again (the best), I was able to tinker, and I came up with this new logo. I also changed the font choices throughout my website. I’m currently working on postcards to send out to future customers, and the postcards will reflect these new design changes. Perhaps you will be one of the first to receive one in the mail! I hope they leave an impression and bring a smile to your face, even if you don’t send me your equipment to sharpen. Since I plan to get pretty creative with the postcards, I might even blog about them again soon.

Until next week, when I look at my logo, puke, and want to change it up again, and again, and again…

P.S. Absolutely no AI was used in the making of this logo or in the writing of this blog post. I didn’t even use it to correct my grammar. This is how I write. I use AI for certain utilitarian, time-saving tasks, but I still prefer to use my God-given brain for creative endeavors.