When I decided to go back to blogging and expressed my desire to revamp it “big time” – meaning, not just a blog but a web site – my website designer/developer friend Joy offered to help me. I knew zero about techie stuff, I just had this vision how I wanted it to look like. Truth be told, this site has been set up long before I even envisioned how I’m going to do it. So I’m really thankful for friends who pushed into the right direction.
The Logo
When I started getting around to wrapping the idea around my head of a new site, I knew I wanted one thing – I wanted an image to tie up with my identity. Call it logo or brand or whatever you like to call it. I wanted to go all the way. So I commissioned another good friend, Nyree of Embellished Design Studio, to help my vision become a reality. I have the vision of how I want it to look like, and feel, and convey but I needed help on the technicalities (again).
During the designing of my logo, I told Nyree I wanted to keep it simple, minimalist, modern yet romantic and involve my initials only (AA). I wanted a logo I can carry over business cards or official receipts (yes, told ya, go big!). I told her I’m a sucker for a marriage between serifs and script fonts because that’s what I am. The color was a no-brainer. I was always the pink and brown girl. I did consider blues and oranges and greens – and while I do love the color, it was essentially not me.
We had so many revisions up until Nyree, with the help of me, Joy and another friend Litzie, brainstormed on the final draft. One suggested why not make it opposite and use negative space (I don’t recall the technical terms anymore). Once I got the inverted A’s, I knew that was it. But it lacked something – and it was swirls. I have always been addicted to swirls. I think it’s part of my femininine side. I initially showed where I want the swirls to go to, doing a rough draft on Photoshop and explained I want it to have an upward movement like fire burning, or growth evolving. Nyree got it perfectly. (Thank you, Ny!)
The Content
During the development of the content for the site, I used the pen and paper trick and wrote everything down. What do I want to give to the site? What do I want to focus on (niche)? This was where I took the longest time with – I didn’t want a personal journal but I also didn’t want just a professional site. It seemed that I couldn’t make it work. But somehow I managed to marry the two.
Words. Memories. Stories.
These three words were my constants all throughout the content development.
I think that statement couldn’t describe me more.
Ultimately, I’m a memory keeper. From my love of stories came an opportunity to be a writer who gets paid for it. I’m lucky.
Getting the Site to go Live
Now comes the hard part. It took a few revamps before it finally looked Aggie. At first, I used patterns all throughout the site, no pictures. I love the pinks but during my nth revision, I told Joy I was getting tired of looking at it. She then told me it kinda looked like a stationery store (and she was right) and advised me to use pictures.
But I had no pictures! (At this point I was ready to shelve everything and call it a day).
But thankfully I persevered. So here we are.
This was our guide to developing the physical look of the site. Joy told me to use circles to tighten up the site’s look and she based my site’s colors based on the branding guide given by Nyree:
It truly takes a whole village, people. As I’ve said in my Instagram account the day the site went live:
Thankful for bloggers who have inspired me, friends who helped me create the new look and friends who kept pushing me to finish. Thank you. May my site be worthy of your belief.
It seems that most of my images from my past posts are missing (what a shame). I will try to redo them one by one but at this point I just want to move forward and write again. So if you are browsing my pasts post and find broken images, sorry. I will try to fix that (soon).
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