About Face: Some Thoughts On Redesigning My About Page
I’ve been meaning to do a couple of things for a long time now: rewrite my resumé, and redesign my About Page. Here I am brooding about it:
Ever heard that wonderful Buddhist proverb, When the student is ready, the teacher will appear? I thought of it last week when I chanced across an article by Michael Margolis called The Resume Is Dead, The Bio Is King.
It begins with this premise: Gone are the days of “Just the facts, M’am.” Instead, a potential client wants to know if you’re relevant to his or her work. Further: Trust comes from personal disclosure– something a traditional resume isn’t suited for. Instead, you need a bio that tells the bigger story– especially if you’re in business for yourself.
The author suggests that you share more of what you really care about. “Tell a story that people can identify with as their own, and the need to persuade, convince, or sell them
on anything disappears.”
This doesn’t mean you can ignore the ol’ skill set, of course: if you haven’t got skills that somebody wants, the best storytelling in the world isn’t going to get you hired.
But assuming you’ve got the necessary skills, the premise makes sense to me. And it really came to together when I read the following line in 6 Steps To Creating A Knockout Online Portfolio by Mell Ravenel:
Personalize your About page to tell your story, not just list your past jobs.
That was what I needed to hear. I have a job history, a paper trail, but my early jobs weren’t art-related. What art director is going to care that I was once a bank teller or a methods analyst? My story’s no thrills-and-chills spellbinding adventure, but it’s a lot more interesting than my job history.
At this point, you may be wondering: What did your old About Page look like?– was it really that bad? Yes, it was– here’s a screen shot of the entire page:
Oh, it tells you a little, and it had links to my work and some client testimonials. But does
it make you say: Hmm! I need an illustrator, and this is my kinda guy! I got a good feeling here– I’m gonna call him and take a chance!!
Uh… not really. There’s just not enough to go on, not enough to prompt that leap of faith.
So I needed to tell my story and give people a chance to identify with it– where to start?
Fortunately, Mr. Margolis had some suggestions. Boiled down as low as they will go, I’d summarize them as follows:
1. Share a point of view: How do you see the world? What matters most?
2. Tell your backstory: How did you get where you are? What riddles are you still trying to solve?
3. Include “external validators”: Client testimonials, awards, etc– just a few to show your story is real.
4. Make yourself approachable: Share an interest or guilty pleasure. “Vulnerability is the new black.” (use good sense)
Being an illustrator, I’d add one more:
5. Get yourself some visuals: Stories with pictures get a lot more interest than stories with just text.
So I wrote My Story, keeping it as short and simple as possible. I also created visuals to serve as “chapter headings”– like this one for sharing my point of view as an illustrator:
And this rather, uh, infantile piece for my “backstory”:
Before I forget: the About image (of me brooding) at the top of this post is a doctored still from a video clip. I was playing the character of Inky Draws, The World’s Oldest Cartoonist. You can see a short clip of the production here.
So how’d my New About Page turn out? See for yourself: you can either click About
in the menu bar under my blog header, or just click here: Gosh whiz! I’m just dying
to see Mark Armstrong’s exciting new About Page. (And I’d appreciate your feedback, thanks.)
What do you think? Is a person’s About Page as important as they say? Have you incorporated any special features on your own About Page that you’d care to share? Hope you’ll leave a comment.
If you enjoyed this post, I invite you to subscribe. You can either leave a comment and click the box that says Notify me of new posts via email, or click on the Subscribe button below the Portfolio Thumbnails in the sidebar at the top right of this page.
Other Posts You Might Enjoy:
Silly Me: The Beguiling Power Of Self-Mockery (on a design agency’s About Page)
Header Look Better When Color Picks Click (importance of color in blog design)
Oops! I Just Took A Header– SPLAT! (why I decided to change my blog header)
Birthday Tribute: Monkee Meets Blonde, Gets Vertigo, Goes Gothic
A belated Happy February 13th Birthday to Monkee Peter Tork (b. 1942) and actress Kim Novak (b. 1933). When I discovered that painter Grant Wood (1891-1942), best known for his American Gothic, was also born on February 13th, I knew exactly what I wanted to do. My tribute is part of my ongoing “birthday clock” series. Here’s the final:
American Gothic may well be the most parodied painting in history. Here’s the famous original (1930):
A larger detail image of our two birthday people:
The Monkees were an American made-for-television band formed in 1966. The show’s producers held auditions for the band, and Tork supposedly got the job after his friend Stephen Stills auditioned, was turned down, and was asked if he had a better-looking musician friend. Ouch. The tv series only lasted two years, but the band became hugely successful, their first four albums going to No. 1.
Tork usually got the vocals for the Monkees’ zanier songs, my own personal favorite being Auntie Grizelda. He also co-wrote their second season closing theme, For Pete’s Sake.
Novak’s first big role was in Picnic (1955), based on the stage play. She’s best remembered for her dual role in Vertigo (1958), widely considered Alfred Hitchcock’s best film. She re-teamed with Vertigo co-star James Stewart for Bell, Book And Candle (1958), a comedy in which she played a witch.
Novak largely retired from films in the mid-60s, thus escaping the sad decline of so many stars. She had studied at the Art Institute of Chicago before being “discovered,” and today devotes much of her time to painting.
Here’s a publicity photo of Novak (circa late 1950s), along with the cover photo for the Monkees first LP (1966). Peter Tork is second from right.
The clock in my illustration is a nod to the original Vertigo movie poster:
A close-up of the birthday clock, with witch’s hat, monkeys, and a few Alfred Hitchcock Birds thrown in for good measure:
I’ll close with a couple of videos for your amusement: a clip from The Monkees old tv series, with Peter Tork singing Auntie Grizelda, and a truly mind-boggling 9-minute slideshow of American Gothic parodies.
What do you think? Are you a Monkees fan? Should I have tried to squeeze Alfred Hitchcock into the drawing? Can you look at American Gothic without laughing?? Hope you’ll leave a comment.
If you enjoyed this post, I invite you to subscribe. You can either leave a comment and click the box that says Notify me of new posts via email, or click on the Subscribe button below the Portfolio Thumbnails in the sidebar at the top right of this page.
Other Posts You Might Enjoy:
Gypsy In The Morning: Django Reinhardt Alarm Clock
When Art And Rockabilly Music Collide
Sherlock Holmes: The Case Of The Scandalous Soap
How To Dye A Die Using Photoshop Blending Modes & Layer Masks
It’s been awhile since I posted a Photoshop tutorial. This one is short and sweet and highlights a couple of Photoshop features that can make an illustrator’s job a lot easier.
Photoshop lets you work in layers. If your illustration has 5 different objects, you can put them all on separate layers, work on them separately, then combine them all at the end by flattening the layers.
What’s less well known: layers have blending modes and opacity controls which allow them to blend with the layers below them in interesting ways. Simply duplicating a layer, giving it a different blending mode, and then reducing its opacity a bit can create some wonderful effects.
You can also create a mask on a layer which allows you to restrict a blending mode’s effect to very specific parts of the image: you mask out the effect where it’s not helpful.
The more you experiment with these features, the more intuitive they become– meaning you gradually develop an instinct about what might “work,” saving you a lot of time and effort.
If it sounds confusing, fear not. Let’s look at an example. I recently did a spot illustration about the career paths of law school graduates. Here’s the final:
To start, I put the die on a separate layer, and use a large halftone brush to fill it with red. I imagine my light source coming from the left, and add a splash of white on the front face of the die, and a very small dab on the right. The Layers Palette shows the layer is in Normal mode.
To maximize my options and give myself greater control, I create a new layer. I splash on more white and change the blending mode of the new layer from Normal to Screen. This causes it to blend with the previous layer in a way which brightens the effect (i.e., it makes the newly-applied white brighter than it would have been in Normal mode). 
I group the two layers together, create a new layer and apply a stroke of dark red on the right side of the die. Rather than continue to add brush strokes, I change the mode of the new layer from Normal to Multiply to see what the effect will be.
Multiply always blends layers in a way which makes dark colors darker. I like the effect on the right side of the die. I could reduce the effect by lowering the layer’s opacity setting, but I don’t– I leave it at 100%. The change to Multiply also causes the front face of the die to darken. That’s an effect I don’t want. So I add a layer mask and mask (reduce) the effect on the front face of the die; I thereby restrict most of the effect to the right face of the die.
Now I’m having second thoughts: is the die a little too dark? There’s an easy way for me to find out: I duplicate the most recent layer and change the blending mode of the copy from Multiply to Screen. This lightens the overall image. But wait, I only want certain portions of the die to be a little lighter. Same solution: I create a mask for the new layer, and use a low-opacity brush to mask (reduce) the lightening effect in certain areas. 
At this point, I’m freely experimenting because I’ve never had to create a realistic looking die before. I group all my layers together, and create a new layer. I apply a burst of white to the front face of the die using a spherical gradient, and add a stroke of red to the right side. I like the resulting effects. I leave the layer set to Normal mode. 
I decide the red has too much of an orange tint. I apply a Curves adjustment layer. I bypass the CMYK composite channel and instead adjust the four individual color channels (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black) separately. Definitely better.
What if I made it darker? To see what the results might look like, I duplicate the Curves adjustment layer, then experiment with different blending modes for the duplicated layer. I like the effect of mode = Color Burn, and leave the layer opacity at 100%. I don’t want to burn (darken) the front face of the die, so I create a layer mask to restrict the burn to the right face of the die.
Decision time: I could continue to experiment, perhaps try to achieve a translucent look, but decide the die looks pretty good as is. I add another layer, and fill all the dots on the die with white. I debate whether to give the dots some depth by adding blue shading. It would be easy to do, but I decide against it: I know from experience that one can overwork a simple image. I leave well enough alone.
I ground the image by applying a soft blue-gray using two different brushes on separate layers– and I’m done. Here’s the final again:
What do you think? Do you use blending modes to experiment with color effects? Ever grappled with the problem of knowing when to stop working on a piece of art? Hope you’ll leave a comment.
If you enjoyed this post, I invite you to subscribe. You can either leave a comment and click the box that says Notify me of new posts via email, or click on the Subscribe button below the Portfolio Thumbnails in the sidebar at the top right of this page.
Other Posts You Might Enjoy:
Year-End Laffs Dept: Gag Cartoons That Won’t Make You Gag– I Hope!
Weinergate: Giving Hot Dogs A Bad Name
Creation + Evolution = Illustration
