chapter 7: blueflower.org v4.0
(june 2002 to july 2002)

I devoted more time to the actual design and layout of the fourth version than how long it was actually in use. This version was posted on June 1, 2002, and was replaced on July 21, 2002 - less than two months later. It's not so much that I didn't like this version, but rather that I wanted a fresh version when I converted from Blogger to Movabletype, and this design was the casualty.

Many important things to take note of with this version. First of all, we have the introduction of the new flower logo. When I created it, I had one other very specific logo in mind - the Target logo. The Target logo is extremely simple, yet highly-recognizable, and that's precisely what I wanted in a logo. I've toyed with the exact shades of blue on the five petals over the years, but otherwise the logo has remained exactly the same ever since I first created it in 2002.

I wanted the new flower logo to replace the need to even have the name of the site anywhere on the page, but eventually I realized that it wouldn't be enough, so I created the logo employed vertically on the far-left. This was the first time that I used Futura for the site's logo, and - just like the flower itself - Futura (in all lower-case) has now become the standard for the site's logo.

I made extensive use of photos taken with my new digital camera in this latest design. Below the navigation menu on the top of the site were seven color photos I had taken. There was no rhyme or reason to the seven photos other than that I thought they looked cool. From left to right, the subjects of the photos were: my stovetop, a window on the Nolte Center at the University of Minnesota, the Minneapolis skyline as viewed from the east across the Mississippi, empty pill bottles leftover from when I had an infection in March 2002 where my wisdom teeth had been removed in January, my cat Oreo, trucks heading west on I-94 about to pass under the LaSalle Street overpass (a block from my apartment), and a roll of toilet paper in my bathroom.

Below the photos and to the right of the flower logo on the main page it said "Welcome", which was written using Impact over a gradient that went from blue to white. In place of "Welcome", each of the other pages had the name of that page (like "About" or "Links"). I was quite proud of myself for finally learning how to use the gradient tool on Photoshop.

At the top of the side column on the left, each page had a different photo of me looking rather chubby in my oversized hoodie. In addition to the photo of me holding out my hands on the front page, other photos included me with dishelved hair holding a sign saying "Will work for beer" (on the blog pages - I had recently graduated from college and was unemployed at the time), holding a phone to my ear and pen in my mouth (about page), wearing headphones and reading the back of a Hank Williams LP (projects page), and looking proudly at my blow-up can of Whoop Ass (links page).

The Crazy blog lasted as long as this version. It came into being for the introduction of this version and disappeared when I moved to next version. It was pointless anyway, so it wasn't exactly a big loss, but the blog entries remained unavailable until the introduction of blueflower.org classic.

Included on the Projects page was my first attempt at writing a history of blueflower.org. It obviously wasn't to the extent that this history goes, but it was a first attempt nonetheless.

Despite the months of work put into this design, I made the switch from Blogger to Movabletype in July 2002, and decided to redesign while I was at it.

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