Hey everyone!
If any of you are regular visitors to the site, you may have noticed some appearance changes in the past few months.
Some of you may also know that I am not an artist, by any means. The written word is my strong suit, and any time I am asked to do anything creative for an assignment for school or work or anything, my brain immediately freezes up and I go into panic mode. I thought I was going to be an artist, like my aunt Lynne in first grade. You know what happened? I had an assignment on the fennec fox and I ended up drawing a hideous looking creature--the artist dream went up in smoke.
Anyway! Back to the purpose of this post. As you may have noticed, the site has gone through some upgrades in the past few months, and this is all thanks to two local artists that I owe a million and one thanks to.
The first facelift we received a few months back was the integration of an actual logo for the first time since I launched the site in July of 2019. And by logo, I mean the simplistic but quite ingenious outline of my glasses you now see at the top of every page, as well as the thumbnail icon for individual tabs, save icons, and so on. I had been struggling with the idea for that particular thumbnail since I launched the site. The first few years (and yes, I cringe when I typed the word years), I was using an old photo of me as a baby. Not very professional by any means, and luckily now we have something much better! The logo was created by my wonderful boyfriend (who prefers his internet anonymity) and so he'll remain unnamed here, but still I wanted to say a massive thank you to him! <3
Now, the newest update we just launched last night. For the first few years, the home page of the site here had another family photo. I always wanted to replace it, but once again I struggled for years with what I wanted and, once I decided, how I would acquire whatever it was.
Again, I am not an artists by any means, so once I had the idea, I was lucky enough to be put in contact with another amazing, local artist named Duncan Robertson. You can find Duncan on his Instagram page here: duncan.art. Duncan has been a friend of my family for many years and after giving him the idea, he came back with this wonderful cartoon version of me!
And yes, in case you're wondering I do assume this very pose whenever I become particularly exasperated by something or other, which happens quite often.
After Duncan supplied the sketch, my boyfriend and I put our heads together to figure out how best to implement her on the front page of the website. After a few sets of trial and error, we eventually landed on the image you see now.
And in case you don't want to click back over there, you can view it below.
Yes, its wordy. Yes, its a little over the top. And yes, a few of the facts will probably piss off certain people who get offended by every little thing. But here's the thing--I am EXASPERATED for many reasons, and these are just six of those reasons. If one person reads these little fact bubbles and retains that knowledge, I'll be happy.
Hopefully more than one person will walk away remembering these women's names and will be able to implement that knowledge somehow. Or maybe they'll see the numbers of the women and realize just how many thousands of people have lived throughout human history, and how varied and complicated those lives can be.
Big things are coming in the future, and this was just the first step. Thank you for being readers or users, and hanging in there with me this far. I can't wait to see where the future takes us from here.
Thanks again to Mr. Anonymity (my boyfriend!) and Duncan Robertson. Please please please follow Duncan on Instagram and follow his artistic journey there--I'm sure he'll appreciate it!
Thanks again everyone.
Stay informed, stay interested, and keep reading.
-Zoë, The Exasperated Historian