I'm Just Sharing

Just about two months ago, I announced my newest website, Smoke Not So Much. Well, today I’m mentioning a slight redesign of the site. But there’s a story that goes along with it.

See, about a month ago, I had this guy send me an email that, well, pretty much heckled me and my web design. I had a couple of choices at that point. I could ignore it, write back and call him a bunch of names, or just respond. I responded, kind of called him a “troll”, and moved on with life.

Well, it turned out that this was a guy who wanted to offer something for nothing. He had seen the movie 7 Pounds with Will Smith, and he was sending out emails to see how people would respond to see if anyone might be worthy of something free he wanted to give them.

So we met for lunch, in a public place mind you, because I still wasn’t sure of his intentions, and I wasn’t taking any chances. He wasn’t what I was expecting, because he turned out to be a little guy, and he probably was less sure of me than of him. Still, he put forward his offer to grant me something that had to do with a design.

I wasn’t sure what to do. I know how to build things, but I’m not the best designer in the world. Okay, I’m not a designer at all. I just don’t have the eye to make art, though I do have a discerning eye to critique it. I came home and thought about it, and decided that I wanted a different logo for my anti-smoking site. I told him this, and, if you go to the site, that’s what the new logo is. Now, as a point of comparison, here’s what the original logo was:

So, he did what I kind of had in my mind, but had no idea of how to create it. And he suggested some color changes and the like, and I figured why not give it all a try. If you hadn’t seen it, the background color was light gray, the sidebars a dark gray, and all the print was brown.

Anyway, I like it, my wife loves the logo, and that’s that. Not sure if the look will bring more traffic or not, but it certainly can’t hurt, right? See, there are nice people in the world!