Pixelated Blogging
Mon Nov 23rd, 2009 – 14:08
From Pixelated Blogging
At a time when various blogs are evolving into printed products - Exhibits A, B, and C - it's oddly reassuring to see what started as a zine back in the late 1980s maintain its web dominance a good ten years after it launched as one of the first juggernaut blogs in 2000. Chronicling all things technology, creative and sometimes just plain bizarre, Boing Boing has been an assured time waster for its thousands of readers for what seems like a blogging eternity. I realize that a blog is kind of off topic amidst the corporations, universities and consumer products we regularly feature on Brand New but in terms of impact, for a broadly niche audience, few entities can outpace Boing Boing. So as a fellow blogger I thought it would be nice to acknowledge identity design within our shared medium of communication.
Committed Boing Boing readers will quickly point out that the After logo is actually an old logo, and they would be right. It was designed by Boing Boing co-founder Mark Frauenfelder and was used from 1999 until 2007, when it was replaced by another pixelated wordmark designed by pixel-happy eBoy, and helped establish a look that would ooze into other Boing Boing ventures like Boing Boing Gadgets and Boing Boing Video. All of it, a kind of crude visual attitude - the pixelated equivalent of a zine no less. This past October, Boing Boing redesigned its web site, to a mixed review worth 285 comments, and brought back Mark's old logo, which I always preferred to the eBoy one. Gone too, for now at least, is Jackhammer Jill, who had stood by the logo for a long time.
But as much as I liked the original logo, I couldn't help but wish
it had been pushed a little further and evolved. The letterforms and
pixel construction lend themselves to plenty of visual play and for a
site that derives much of its pleasure from the fun that the internet
brings it would have been nice to embrace some of that variety and
unexpectedness of the web. Or at the very least, the gridnik in me
would have liked to see the counterspaces be a little more even and
create a much more rhythmic set of tig 
Don't forget to cast your vote about this post online
