I was a bit naive about the Internet when my original Jeff Fisher LogoMotives website went live in the fall of 1998. The largest newspaper in the state, The Oregonian, had interviewed me for a feature story about my business and, at the end of the interview, the reporter asked me if I had a website.
In saying "yes," I told a bit of a fib. No, let me correct that, I told an outright lie. I had a URL registered, and had thought about the website a little - but no effort at all had been put into actually creating a web presence of any kind.
I gave the reporter the URL and went into panic mode. I had three to four days to get a site up and running before the article was published the following Monday.
Over the course of a long weekend, my partner Ed, friends Scott Randall and Jason Holland, and myself worked days and nights to get a website up and running. Sunday night it was all set to go. On Monday morning I retrieved The Oregonian from my front porch and a great article had been published - with all my contact information, including the web address, edited out of the piece due to concerns about length.
Still, I now had a website - which I saw as nothing more than an online portfolio for my primarily local clientele. I had given no consideration to the fact that my website had an immediate international audience. Soon I was attracting clients from across the United States and around the world.
For the next nine years the website remained fairly static. There were minor updates, but not a lot changed. I was kind of in an "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" mode. Redesigning, or updating, the site was one of those things I might do when I had the time. Yeah, right.
This past fall my second book, Identity Crisis!: 50 redesigns that transformed stale identities into successful brands, was being released. The upcoming major event in my life made me realize that I was actually embarrassed by my now tired, old website. At that time I'd been writing my blog, bLog-oMotives, for about two years and I really enjoyed the process. A few months earlier I'd also started a blog to promote the Identity Crisis! book. Creating an online portfolio in a blog format seemed a natural, and manageable, solution for me - especially since, although I use a computer daily for my work, I am not a skilled technician when it comes to such things (nor do I want to be!). Knowing just enough to be a bit dangerous is just fine.
The Jeff Fisher LogoMotives "blogfolio" was born.
A little over seven months since its initiation, I am very pleased with the results my "blogfolio" has produced. With a Jeff Fisher LogoMotives homepage - making use of my decade-old URL - directing visitors to all three blogs, many more potential clients seem to find their way to me. It gets much more traffic than ever visited my more traditional site. Potential clients, clients, editors, writers, design peers, design students, design educators and others have all taken the time to compliment me on the new web presence and its content.
I really appreciate how the blog format has allowed me to easily exhibit examples of my work, share articles I've written, post articles written about my work, present my "Toot! Toot!" press releases and even recycle a few bLog-oMotives entries into a concise archive. I've especially enjoyed presenting my identity redesigns and "excavated design artifacts" again.
A "blogfolio" may not work for everyone, but it's been a great marketing and promotion tool for Jeff Fisher LogoMotives.
© 2008 Jeff Fisher LogoMotives.
