Loooooook! The blog got a makeover — huzzah!!! ๐
I’m so excited!!!
When I first started this blog around a year ago, I was so out of practice. A decade of not working my design and web developer muscles had me NOT wanting to attempt any of that at all. My priority was writing and processing. So, I ended up buying some random theme that I thought was decent enough to start that wasn’t your basic run of the mill template. That seemed to work and helped get the blog up and running quickly… until recently, as I’ve been wanting to revamp, I found that the template was quite restrictive for what it is that I wanted to do. I also didn’t want to invest the time into learning how to work with the template that I had bought, so I decided to just make my own.
I guess what triggered all of this is that a year later, with all of this content, I realized oh… maybe it’s time to give Chaos Baby the proper home that it deserves lol. I also felt it was time to do some rebranding. Chaos Baby needed a face. So, I gave her one:
Apparently, it’s just a drawing of me as a child lmao. I actually sent the drawing to my mom and asked her, “Does this remind you of me as a kid?” and she responded with, “100% ๐” lol
Funny story about my theme’s default accent color — I actually don’t love pink normally because it was always forced on me growing up. You know how many pink dresses I had to wear?!?!? ๐คฎ But I guess using it here, on my own terms as an accent color, feels like reclaiming that relationship in a self-empowering way lol. To be clear though, I have nothing against the color. I actually quite enjoy seeing people who like it wearing the color. But personally? No thank you. I’ll wear it as an accent color but not an entire outfit of just pink lol.
Anyway, according to my parents, I was INCREDIBLY mischievous and unhinged as a child, ALWAYS getting into trouble and saying the darndest things. I guess not much has changed in that department hehehe. Well, I’m a little more mature now and have a bit of a filter. But back then I was always up to no good. Not trying to rack up my rap sheet or anything. Just providing some context.
Btw I couldn’t stop laughing while coming up with the logo. I was bouncing ideas around with AI, one thing led to the next, and then bam — tiny mischievous child with a baby bottle gun happened lol. I still crack up whenever I see the logo. It’s soooooo stupid but it’s so me lmaoooo. It was also incredibly fun getting back into drawing on the computer again, laying down anchor points and creating shapes. Been an incredibly long time since I’ve last done that. The experience brought me back to the good ole days when I would draw my own designs in Illustrator and Photoshop. Fun!
I’d say this rebranding and site redesign was a labor of love. I did NOT expect to be able to accomplish all of this in the short amount of time that it took. I guess knowing my brand quite intimately — it’s my own mind — and having AI as my collaborator really sped things up immensely. Super duper cool!!!
You know, during my dark night of the soul I had felt incredibly bitter. I was SO angry with myself for having transferred to art school and the path that it led me on. It wasn’t cheap either. I felt like I had wasted my money on a degree that led me to where I ended up — the land of angry and bitter. I had *major* regrets. I was very unhappy with my choices and had spiraled pretty hard. Everything that I had once loved (graphic design and web development) just felt so icky to me. I needed a huge break from them, to figure out who I was without them. At the time, I didn’t know that I was actually upset with feeling manipulated by someone who was very good at it and not the work. I had clumped a lot of my negative experiences with my work, which totally tarnished things. But thankfully, that is no longer the case.
So color me surprised as I am now utilizing every single thing I had learned in my entire life, things that I was incredibly passionate in but had to push away, to create this new branding and template design. It’s almost like I’ve breathed new life into these areas and skills of mine, giving them their own proper rebirth. My tools feel super charged now post integration! I also did not think I’d art direct my own vision and have my fingers in every single part of it too. That was crazy!!! The experience collabing with AI was INSANE. “What about this? What about that? Can we try this? Scrap that, let’s do things this way.” It was SO MUCH FUN!!!!!!!!!!!!! Would do it again. 1000%!
So now I guess my regrets were not warranted lol. I suppose I just needed some time to dive into my inner world, catch up on what I had missed around my emotional and mental landscape, before coming back out to create actual content I can design around. I guess I needed to heal and integrate in order to get to this point. And as I’ve been exiting my hermit phase, technology (including AI) has finally caught up to where I wanted it to be a decade ago. So, the timing worked out perfectly IMO. Just in due time.
This experience has been *really* fascinating to me because in the past, whenever I had an idea to design a website, I never had actual content that could keep the site alive lol. It’d just be a shell, and so my sites never really went anywhere. They’d just be one and done projects that were easily forgotten. But I guess this time around, I did it in reverse — I needed to find something worthwhile to write about and created the content first (a year of writing), then designed something suitable for that content. And voila! Here is the new Chaos Baby. I mean like duh obviously this is how to do it but whatever, you already know I’m slow. It worked out great hehehe.
My absolute favorite part of the new site design though? The main navigation on desktop. It’s SOOOOOOOOOO FUN! I had never thought of navigation like that. So coming up with this solution was just bananas. I’d like to find ways to use it more often actually. Also, if you hover your cursor over the logotype, it does something quite fun! Oh… and if you haven’t already, please go and check out the site on desktop. It’s a *much* nicer experience there than on mobile, that’s for sure.
Also, the most serendipitous thing about this whole experience is that I realized young me knew how to have fun lol. Is part of growing up just kind of forgetting just how fun and exciting life can be? That not everything has to be so heavy and depressing? It’s almost like this mascot is a reminder for me that life can still be *magical* as long as I remember. I guess what I’m also really grateful for is the growth mindset and finally finding my way back to what’s important. There’s always something interesting and fun to learn as long as we are willing, and I don’t need to let the learning lessons of my past weigh me down. When viewed from a different perspective, they’re really just helping me get to where I need to be. I’m so glad to have inherited this from my mother ๐
Anyway, I hope you like the new look. It’s incredibly special to me how each section has its own theme. You might notice that some posts and sections have their own unique themes as well to kind of capture the emotions of what’s being expressed. I think it’s a pretty rad system! Definitely check out “The Mind” (that brain icon in the main nav) area too!!! It’s my tag cloud mind map and it’s *super* cool. You can literally see how the ideas in my mind link together. I really liked how I was able to see how my notes linked to each other in Obsidian and so I thought that could be a really cool feature to bring to the blog as well. The search page is pretty nifty too. I also finally decided to add an actual working contact form so there’s that lol.
This was legit by far the most fun I’ve had working on a project like this. I am floored. I never thought I’d act as an art director but I guess it worked out well. So fascinating what I can create without self imposed limitations. This time, I also wasn’t constrained by legacy browser support, something that had me hesitate on trying crazy designs back in the day, so I actually got to use modern tech without apologizing for it and go all out to my heart’s content lmao ๐
Anyway, welcome to the New Chaos Baby Universe. Come on in and make yourself comfortable! I hope you enjoy your stay ๐