That’s right, after almost a year, Greasy Pig Studios is finally being rebranded with a new logo and new website!
A Quick Eulogy
In many ways it feels both like it’s been forever as well as just yesterday when I unveiled the last Greasy Pig Studios site, my first foray in designing a dynamic portfolio site built using the WordPress platform. And it was a smashing success!
I finally had a platform to showcase the wide breadth of work I’d produced in the past few years, as well as a blog to update people of the latest goings-on. But being a novice in WordPress, the site, while significantly more successful than my previous websites, was in many ways clunky, sometimes hard to read, and on the whole was starting to feel stale.
What Ain’t Broke
I fiddled with tons of layout ideas, some more drastic than others, veering wildly from more minimalistic to showing more information, and in the end I picked a theme that in many fundamental was still functioned like the previous site, which was great for showing a lot of content in an organized way, but now ran faster, smoother, and looked and felt better. I settled on the Magazeen theme from Smashing Magazine, and set to modifying it to my specific needs.
What’s Fixed, What’s New
First of all, we turned the lights on! Wanting to go with a lighter, funner feel, I finally went with a black on white layout that made reading text much easier on the eyes, as well as a navigation system that was more transparent and intuitive, but also bold and eye catching. There shouldn’t be a problem with you finding what you’re looking for.
I ditched the home splash page, which just added unnecessary obstacles, opting instead for a full but well-balanced front page that gave you all the necessary links and information immediately, as well as alerting you of the best and latest work and blog posts. Speaking of which…
The Blog area has been revamped to be more prominent in the front page, in hopes that the site can foster a stronger, more loyal community of creatives. Our interview series especially deserves more up-front attention!
A more full-fledged About page gives curious readers information with more personality and flair, which fits well with GPS’s new branding of being more personal and approachable. The previous About page was a throwaway and felt way too sterile for a brand called Greasy Pig Studios.
I also implemented strong social networking functionality, from embedding my twitter feed to having prominent links to my various social networking profiles. Sadly, I know that those profiles have a tendency of being updated more often, so this way at least you’re never left in the dark! Speaking of which, don’t forget to connect!
And finally, speaking of connecting, I finally enabled comments! We’ll have to wait and see how well that actually does for controlling spam and trolls, but I really do want to make this site more of a community, and it’s not a community without audience participation.
What’s Still Upcoming
Unfortunately, I started working on this site just as I was booked on multiple gigs, in fact arguably the most gigs in my history of working, and as a result I was forced to launch the site with only one new portfolio piece. Sadly even if I had the time to update content, some of the projects are still not releasable to the public. But as soon as they do and I get the time to breathe, I’ll be sure to put them up!
In line with that, the most glaring shortcomings of the site are the fact that my animation and motion graphics reels are SO outdated right now, not nearly showcasing my best work, obviously most of which turned out after I made the reels. This will be my greatest upcoming goal, and again only my schedule stands in the way.
First! Haha. Congrats on getting the new site up and running!