kartooner.com

One of the most important pieces of the kartooner redesign is the addition of a medievil crest. A few people have emailed me about the crest image which serves as part of the kartooner.com logo and instead of emailing everyone individually with the same answer I’ve decided to explain how the crest came to be and what it means to me as an artist and visionary.

For starters, Wikipedia defines a crest as being:

Jim Henson’s The Dark Crystal was an epic undertaking for Henson and company in the early 80’s. It also remains one of my favorite movies of all time. Despite the high production quality of the film the difficulty in creating The Dark Crystal was partly due to the mechanics of mimicking realistic movement with intricate hand puppets, something that had never been conveyed successfully despite prior attempts and experimentation.

Two years ago, after reading Designing with Web Standards by Jeffrey Zeldman, I made an oath to myself that I would kick my old web development habits and take my Jedi training in CSS-based design.

I can remember the exact moment when the proverbial lightbulb appeared above my head because it was around the same time my daughter was born. In a short span of time two pinnacle moments (albeit with seperate meanings) changed my perspective on life; the birth of my daughter and becoming a better web designer.

In the past 10 or 12 years random strangers have mentioned to me in passing conversation, “You remind me of my boss or my friend who lives in such and such town, down by the river.” The first few times this happened, whether it be at a local Blockbuster or in a supermarket aisle, I would simply shrug it off as mere coincidence. However, after several encounters with people mentioning that I look like someone they know I’ve come to realize that I’m either a clone of several people or they are clones of me.