The 24th of March is the one year anniversary of this blog. The site itself has been online since 1996 (read on to find out how that’s been incorporated into the new redesign!). I’ll share more stats with you next week but wanted to let readers know that I’ve been busy organising a special anniversary week (20-24 March), complete with some high profile guest bloggers, each covering one of the main topics I usually blog about here:
- citizen journalism
- internet research
- online community management
- web 2.0
- user generated content and the law
I’ve been so busy, in fact, that my poor little mac powerbook started to smell like it was burning (and before any joker comes along and says it, yes I did get my head out of the powerbook before this happened [see image top left]) before suffering what appears to be a catastrophic hard disk failure. That’s what I get for sitting in the local pub using the wife connection… I digress.
In January I asked readers for views on a several redesigns that my friends at Large, the design company behind the ultra-sexy Agent Provacteur website and many others, had done for cybersoc.com. A handful of you posted comments and more sent emails – overwhelmingly in support of the option I have now installed here.
Many thanks to Rene, the Director of Design at Large, and everyone on her team who worked on the rebranding. Another big thanks goes to Lars and Jim, the founders of Large, who I’ve known since our days together at the Hypermedia Research Centre at the University of Westminster.
Here is how Rene explained the re-branding:
‘Community’ is one of the biggest keywords in the identity. The elements left of the banner therefore symbolize people/groups/subjects coming together. The banner will be animated, so the bricks come together, creating a solid colour bar. The font is heavy and has been modified, so ‘y’ and ‘b’ creates a unique shape similar to the figures ‘9’ and ‘6’. It’s now clear that your site has been online since 96.
Thanks Large! :-)