Those who know me might remember VooDooRadio. What started in 2006 as a mix of music and weird news shifted over the years. As playing music became more difficult due to licensing hurdles, copyright issues, and a changing industry—not to mention changes in my personal life—I reinvented the show by phasing out the music to keep it engaging. I ended the show in 2019, mainly because going back to school for Graphic Design and Media Arts was taking up most of my creative bandwidth. Shortly after, an HVAC leak from our upstairs neighbor ruined my mic, mixer, and gear, putting everything on ice.

I kept the domain around while pondering what was next after a decade-plus of podcasting. That’s when the lightbulb went off: put my design work front and center, and if the show comes back, bring it under the umbrella of my new site as the official sponsor. I started brainstorming names by merging two personal interests: the paranormal and my love of cats. GhostlyCat was the clear winner, and surprisingly, the .com domain was wide open. However, before jumping into building the website, I focused on designing the logo.

After working through several sketch drafts, these three designs stood out as the best directions for the brand. I started all of these as monochrome works to see how they would appear in print later down the road.

Leaning into modern, flat web design, I wanted a simple icon that could double as a favicon and a clear brand mark. My first concept was a 'teardrop' icon, a minimalist shape designed to replace the 'O' in GhostlyCat. Keep in mind, this is all still in the drafting stage (as is the site itself! 😉 ).

For the second concept, I drew inspiration from Texas, where my wife is from, and its strong tradition of monograms on textiles and everyday products. I created the 'Monogram Cat,' using the tail to form the curve of the 'G' alongside a subtle spur graphic. However, pairing this mark with the surrounding typography proved challenging, leading me to pivot toward a simpler typographic integration.

The last draft I worked on was the 'Shadow Cat,' which uses mostly negative space. I drew it out thinking it would look awesome as a vintage-style branding emblem—and at a large size, it did. But once I scaled it down, it fell flat. Cropping it to just the ears and the top of the head didn't solve the problem, and putting it on a rounded button still didn't work cleanly as a browser icon.

"Narrowing your sketches down to a top three really forces you to step back and evaluate your direction. In my case, I ended up going back to basics. Sometimes the simplest idea (in this case, my very first concept) is the winner. I still explored a few variations before settling on the final look, experimenting with color palettes, solid fills, and outline-only versions. (I might actually use both depending on the context, much like in this post's featured image!)

As I moved forward, I started thinking more about the site’s overall presentation. When I reinstalled WordPress, my host offered PageLayer for free, so I decided to dive in and learn it. My current class actually covered building a portfolio in WordPress, but it focused on bare-bones setups using older themes (like Fontfolio, which hasn’t been updated since 2013).

Sure, I could have tweaked the CSS, gone with Elementor, or used Blocksy with Stackable. But the free versions of those block plugins hit a few brick walls for me, whereas PageLayer offered everything I needed, making it the easy choice. As I said before, I am building this site with my design work and possible freelance work or being hired as the primary goal, if I choose to return to podcasting, this site will also be the main site for that as well.

I may be working backwards here, but getting the foundation out is what I was going for. My next step should have been drawing out a site map, which I will start doing, but to give a quick idea what I am going for, here's an outline of what I will be having here:

• Home
• About
  • Personal History
  • Goals
  • Resume
• Blog
• Contact
  • Form?
  • Email Address
  • Social Media Contact
  • Phone?
• Portfolio
  • Advertising
  • Audio Design
  • Branding
  • Print Layout
  • Typography Art