About This Website…
Being something of a polymath myself, I’m drawn to them, my pal Adrienne Asher, for example. She writes and publishes amazing poetry. She paints–oh, does she paint! (See examples of both at adrienneasher.com) She cooks and blogs about it. (Do yourself a favor: blackberryseason.com). And she observes, thinks and writes with uncommon clarity. Oh, and she designs and creates exceptional websites and promotional materials.
As 2017 turned to 2018, I finally threw in the towel on the old bruceblood.com I’d designed and hand-coded in HTML some dozen years earlier. I needed something the looked contemporary, would be easy to maintain, and ideally, have just bit of extra zing. I didn’t have to think twice before shooting off an email to Adrienne to kick off the conversation.
First up was the logo you see above. I gave Adrienne the concept of my porkpie hanging (as it often is) on my beloved archtop, and she took it from there. We went back and forth a bit re: fonts, the simple color scheme, placement, etc., but before long I had the logo I remain thrilled with featured on a stack of eye-catching business cards.
When it comes to websites I am no novice–I spent over half a 30-year career working on Seattle.gov, and I had a pretty good idea what I wanted, especially when it came to the content and organization. That said, it had been a number of years since I’d been party to a web redesign, and to put it mildly, a lot had changed! Knowing the new site would be built with WordPress, Adrienne started with the logo and color scheme, mixed in my ideas, and went in search of a theme that would be clean, clear, modern, and hopefully last a few years. In fairly short order we settled on Stockholm.
The build-out phase was very familiar: Adrienne developed the pages and skillfully incorporated the changes I requested; I gave her the content to which she’d apply her expert editor’s eye before loading it up. Throughout she was always ahead of me, and most patient when I’d miss yet another deadline. Finally, at the beginning of October 2018, we went live with a spankin’ new bruceblood.com, that works and looks great on desktops, laptops, smart phones, and tablets. It felt like I passed a major milestone, an I couldn’t be more pleased
Working with Adrienne on my website and logo turned out to be one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. She’s everything you could ask for in a designer/developer–highly skilled both artistically and technically, able to understand and realize her clients’ needs and ideas, and not the least, pass on the knowledge required to keep the site maintained. Plus, she’s absolutely great to work with. I offer as proof the fact that, after working closely for much of a year, we remain great pals to this day!
If you need a website, check out Adrienne Asher at adrienneasher.com. You’ll be pleased you did.
-BB