History
A long time ago on a computer that is now far, far away I stated designing web sites. In the late 90′s I had a small handful of GeoCities pages — don’t judge me, at least it wasn’t LiveJournal — that were more a collection of animated gifs and sweet scrolling text then any actual content. At the turn of the millennium I purchased my first domain and finally set off on my own.
What you find below is basically the ghosts’ of website’s past. It’s pretty much every form this site has taken since it’s inception in 2001. Design trends have come and gone and as you can see I have done everything possible to avoid them all.
Evolution of Mindless Chatter, or Whatever this Site is Called at the Moment
2001: Lone Palm Creations is born
Lone Palm Creations was born during the summer before I went away to college. The Lone Palm name came from a song by Jimmy Buffett. The idea was to create a graphic/web design business to make money while at school. Except I never really did anything with it. I was lazy and college was fun.
2002: Lone Palm Creations version 2.0
For some reason I thought that wood was cool when this version went live. Looking back at this site, I wonder how it was that this piece of handy work landed me my first paying gig. Maybe they liked wood too? Maybe I was just very convincing in the interview. I dunno.
2003: Mindless Chatter takes over
Yellows and blues and oranges oh my! The first version of the Mindless Chatter blog was very… bright. Even so, it was a momentous moment as the blog-o-sphere has never been the same. Well not really, but at least that last sentence makes it seem like it was an important event.
2004: Lone Palm and more yellow
Lone Palm Creations gave way to the simpler Lone Palm in this redesign. This also marked the first time that random rotating title images came into play. Man PHP is cool! And all those awesome code snippet sites that sprang up were even cooler.
2005: Lone-Palm.net feels a little green
The simple Lone Palm fell for to the slightly more difficult Lone-Palm.net and moved to the dark side. I guess I didn’t totally give into the dark side, but I was totally flirting with it. It was like we were holding hands. Nothing to serious.
2006: Justin Cox’s Mindless Chatter rises like a phoenix
Leaving the Lone Palm monicker in the dust, Justin Cox’s Mindless Chatter was born. Also left in the dust was antiquated HTML. The new age of CSS based web design and blogging arrived with this version of Mindless Chatter. This is where you start to get jealous.
2007: All Corked Up
2006 may have started the new age of web design for Mindless Chatter, but 2007 made it a reality. The limits of CSS and XHTML were pushed and resulted in a design that received recognition from CSS Tux: The Best Dressed Sites on the Web. Corked had been a dream for years and in 2007 it was made a reality. It also marked the end of the transition from Lone-Palm.net to JusitnCox.com. It was like the website finally grew up into a mature member of society.
2008 Part 1: Simply Boring
The beginning of 2008 saw the simplest design in the illustrious history of Mindless Chatter. The idea was to have a simple, clean look so that the focus could be on the words. It might have been the color pattern, or maybe it was the overall layout, but something just never felt right. This site design only lasted a few short months.
2008 Part 2: Striped Shower
Inspiration hit while looking at the shower curtain and few days later a new design was completed. Striped was all about whacky colors and was the closest to a crappy Web 2.0 design that this site ever got. Lasting even less than Simply Boring, this design went the way of the dinosaur after just five weeks.
2008 Part 3: Corked 2.0 – The Return of Corked
After accidentally deleting all of the files related to the wonderful Corked design, I figured it was shelved for good. But after a very long journey, a completely re-envisioned Corked was born. Doing it’s forefather proud, Corked was featured at both CSS Drive and We Love WP.
2009 Part 1: It’s Personal
I was feeling a bit narcissistic while envisioning the 2009 redesign. Along with a little help from the fine people at The Joy of Tech I was able to completely indulge in my self-absorbed fantasy. Mouse over the face and I’ll wink at you! Scary, isn’t it?
2009 Part 2: Limb Kulers
Limb Kulers is a sweet color set created by guvilla that acted as the inspiration for the design. That, and I got tired of looking at my face every day.
2009 Part 3: Indie Rock and Roll
Based on the Indie Music color set by krsiti, Indie Rock and Roll is an extremely simple design that uses a grand total of two graphics. It’s designed for simplicity of content rather than overall flash and eye candy.
