After several months of start-and-stop work due to (paying) projects, the new site is finally live! I’m sure there will be a few kinks to be ironed out over the next few days (or weeks) as posts accumulate and people start using the site. I can already tell I need to get better social media integration, etc.

There were a couple of main motivators for launching the new site. The main thing was that the old one was out of date. Sure, some of the same portfolio pieces are here, too, but there are a lot of other pieces on the new site. Also, it’s all in WordPress. One database. I used a custom post type called “Portfolio” to manage the portfolio. It sure beats using a hack to isolate posts categorized as “portfolio” like I did on BradBlackman.com, but that was before I knew there was such a thing.

Now there’s a blog. (You’re looking at it right now.) The old site didn’t even have one. I’m hoping that with the blog I can build up a little bit of credibility (thought leadership) and just help people out. I’m planning on posting every Monday. I’ve “backlogged” a bunch of posts so that there is at least a little content here already, but be on the lookout for new content every Monday morning. We’ll see how that posting schedule goes, though.

Well, grab the Chrome47 RSS feed and put it in your Google Reader (or whatever) or if you’d like, get blog updates in your inbox.

Hope to see you around!

Your host, Brad Blackman

Howdy. I’m Brad. I am Chrome47. The name originally was a handle I used on various websites and fora back in the day. At one point I had my art and design portfolios on the same site, bradblackman.com, but that apparently confused people. A lot of people asked if I was a fine artist, an illustrator, or a designer.

So I split them up, and left the art on one site and put the design on the other, and as a designer I call myself Chrome47, the idea being that if I get so busy I can spin it out into an agency at some point and keep the name, but I don’t have any plans to do that right now.

I’ve been designing both in print and on the web for just over ten years, and now seemed as good a time as any to make the transition to full-time freelance work.

So on this blog I hope to share some of the knowledge I’ve gained over the years as well as set forth and expand upon my philosophy of design. There will be a lot of posts about typography, design theory, marketing, the business of design/freelance, culture, and of course inspiration from a designer’s point of view.

The two main prongs to my philosophy as a designer are “Communicate, don’t decorate,” and “Delight and inform.” Hopefully that will inform much of the content of this blog.