Taking the Greatest Leap of Faith
I am proud to finally announce that my dream of becoming a full time freelance web/blog designer and internet consultant is finally coming true. This has been a year in the making and those who have followed me over the past 12 months knew that this was coming.
This afternoon, I officially gave my notice at work, and will soon begin the journey of a self-employed entrepreneur. As of January 1, 2008 Brian Gardner Media, LLC will be my employer and the only paychecks I will be receiving are the ones I write myself.
It’s a bittersweet situation for me, because although I cannot wait to take on this challenge of self-employment, my current employer has been nothing short of the best – definitely treats his employees like gold.
I work for small company, and we are treated like royalty – I’m talking free Starbucks coffee, great benefits, can come and go as I please… really it’s a great job.
But my passion for design, for the internet and blogging was too strong to let go of it – I simply love to do what I have been doing on the side, and now look forward to having a much more open schedule to take on work, and participate in some projects that I have been putting off due to a lack of time.
I just want to thank all of the people who have used my themes, left comments, those who have become clients and those who overall have stuck by me the last 12 months. This will be an incredible journey and I am so happy to finally say that I will be working from home as a freelance designer and internet consultant!
A Revolutionary Tech Theme
I am very pleased to announce the launching of Revolution Tech theme, an enhanced WordPress theme ideal for online tech/gadget magazines. One feature which is new to the Revolution series, is a featured video box in the sidebar of the theme, equipped to easily display videos. In addition, the home page is now configured for thumbnail images for each post.
All Revolution theme clients will receive a 25% discount on purchasing any package of the Revolution Tech theme! Contact me for the 25% discount!
One feature I have added in the Revolution Tech theme demo is the ability to theme switch by clicking the links in the sub navbar.
Getting Back to Business
Just because I’ve had some comments and emails asking for some pics from our cruise, I’ll play along and show you a few of them. Note, the cute little girl in the picture with Zach is his new found love Jasmin, with whom he had his first kiss!
Ok, now getting back to business. Here are a few cool things that have been going on of late:
- I have officially released the Revolution News 2.0 theme over on the site. Check out the demo.
- This past week, I was officially listed on Automattic’s WordPress consultant list, something I am very proud of. Thanks Lloyd, for making that happen!
- Two of my best internet friends (Nathan Rice and Cory Miller) have released a really slick newspaper theme called NewsPixel.
- I stumbled across and insanely cool version of my Revolution theme, something that is just way cool. See what an amazing job the Completely Virtual Group did with the theme.
There’s Been a Chris Pearson Sighting
After what seems like years of a WordPress theme hiatus, heavyweight theme designer (and gossip blog mogul) Chris Pearson has released a brand new WordPress theme called Neoclassical. I’d love to rip it to shreds (in fun) because of my envy for him and his popular Cutline theme, but the reality of it is the Neoclassical theme is quite elegant.
Chris was kind enough to show me the theme briefly before it was released, and my simplistic/whitespace design eye found it to be more soothing than Cutline.
There are a few minute similarities, i.e. the random images header, but the theme is designed to appeal to a different niche, in my opinion. Cutline seemed to be more of a “techie” type theme, while Neoclassical seems to have the appeal of something like the Open Education project that he is supporting.
More than anything, this post is my way of welcoming Chris back to the world of theme design – many of you know I briefly managed his Cutline theme, but had to back down due to my crazy and busy schedule. Not that I wanted to try to fill his shoes anyway, definitely not an easy thing to do.
Chris, great work with the theme. The style is simple, typography is great and I’m sure you will see it used elegantly! (I will also endorse the fact that Neoclassical is NOT a Blue Zinfandel copycat.)
Slowly But Surely
Well I am back from vacation, and slowly trying to catch up – some don’t know that in internet time, a week missed can feel like an eternity to recover from. And even though I turned off all of my contact forms and had internet access everyday, I’m still digging myself out.
As the year draws near, I remind myself of the goal I had at the beginning of 2007 – which was to get to a point where I could break off and do custom blog design and consulting full time. I’m not quite there yet, but I can assure you that it’s drawing near. Incorporating my business was a huge step, and one that has really thrust this whole endeavor into reality.
Between now and the end of the year, I really hope that I can get to all of the things on my to-do list. I am planning on making this blog more “resource-ish”, with the intent to focus on readership and content. In addition, I have plans to release 2.0 versions of all four Revolution themes – should be the Revolution News theme, the Revolution Magazine theme, the Revolution theme and the Revolution Sports theme – more than likely in that order. These will be made available free of charge to theme owners.
I am also planning on developing a theme to be considered over at Automattic’s theme marketplace, as well as develop another free theme that people can download from my WordPress themes.
As if that wasn’t enough, I’m hoping at some point to start doing a video blog once a week, where I can talk about things that are going on in the blogosphere and relevant to the WordPress world.
Another thing I hope to accomplish, and this applies to next year, is to attend WordCamp 2008 – I doubt that I’ll be able to swing the Dallas one in March, but am aiming for the San Francisco in June or July of next summer.
Needless to say things are slowly progressing, thus the fun image and facts about fossils and fossilization. It feels as though I’m in slow motion right now as I’m trying to tackle many things at once, but I look forward to a refreshing change of pace, and a most-probable upcoming post entitled, “Gentlemen, Start Your Engines”.
Lastly, I’ll be posting vacation photos very soon, and also wanted to say that as soon as I go full time with design, my contact form will be open for business! (edited to say it’s now open for business.)
