col • o • phon
noun: [ /’käləfən,-fän/ ]
1 : an inscription at the end of a book or manuscript usually with facts about its production
2 : an identifying mark used by a printer or a publisher
The first mention is to all the people I was lucky enough to work with during my years of pushing pixels and the early days of digital tinkering. Gratitude feels like an understatement.
I learned from every person in every environment. Brainstorming solutions to not just the work but trying to get technology to WORK in the first place—trial, and error, sometimes for days, was the way {insert-one-of-many-war-stories}.
The first time I was 'online' on the modern Internet, or the World Wide Web by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, would have been in 1994 with a stack of free AOL disks that give you time online—it was a walled garden, but I was online.
Within a year, Netscape and IE's browser wars were in full swing for market share. That's when to learn the option to "view source" was your friend whenever you came across a website doing something creative or unique.
It was a tedious process mainly because there needed to be more resources to reference online at the time. And more importantly, was the need to build one version for Netscape and one for Internet Explorer because they interpreted web standards differently. Each engine rendered its way—the wild west of web standards.
The only way to learn back then was by unpacking the work of others. There was little dynamically database-driven content at that time—primarily flat HTML files. Typically any web forms were tied to a Perl script through a CGI (Common Gateway Interface). Spending hours browsing was invaluable in learning and understanding how pages work under the hood and what technologies were in the mix as things changed hour by hour, day by day. The pace of progress back then was incredible.
Eventually, I gravitated to websites like A List Apart and Webmonkey — and my learning, in turn, also accelerated.
At the time, I was roughly a year into knowing how to make websites by hand, coding every page using BBEdit. I still have my old HTML files in cold storage.
Table-based layouts with transparent spacer gifs were Web 1.0. It's akin to the stone age on the Internet timeline.
This current edition you are looking at was published in the summer of 2022 using the Semplice theme and is hosted at SiteGround.
Unless otherwise noted, all design work presented in case studies or the portfolio is by me [Bert]. If you have any questions, please reach out.
The typeface used throughout this website is Lexend from Dr. Bonnie Shaver-Troup's work.
I've enjoyed using the typeface, and its versatility is excellent. I've been impressed with how easily it adapts inside of a design.
This website uses the variable weight option, with paragraphs set to 300 weight and headlines to 200 weight. I've used 400 and 600, and 700, which allows much flexibility when typesetting for clarity and nuance.
I've also employed Golden Ratio Typography (GRT) to help define a scale for typefaces based on the baseline type size, content width, and typeface, which helps with reading and consuming content.
There is an excellent visual rhythm to typesetting when using GRT measurement recommendations in combination with Lexend.
I also tapped into resources at Unsplash.com for photography, and photographer credits are in the metadata.
Also, I'm grateful to Dinosoft Lab and The Noun Project for iconography.
I'm grateful to design this website with a robust collection of assets and resources at my fingertips.
I've been more than fortunate to live in a particular time in the evolution of human communications and for that I am grateful.
Cheers,
Bert
June 2023
Word.
More details in the Colophon.
© BERT : MCMXCV — MMXXIIII
hello at bertmahoney dot com
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