Inkblots Magazine

When I was in high school, I had founded a literary and culture magazine called Inkblots. I'd stepped down in 1996, handing it over to some friends of mine to continue, but in 1999 they'd grown tired with it, so I took it back. I knew I wanted to bring it online, but how?

The online edition of Inkblots is the most complex website I'd ever tackled. It started small, only about 30 pages or so, but by the time I posted its Summer 2000 edition it had ballooned to over 300. The site developed a multitiered information architecture, utilizing a cover page, a master table of contents page and subsection contents pages to keep the content categorized and orderly. The content itself was provided by friends, contacts online and complete strangers who discovered us on the web and signed on for the ride. The webzine took the concept of the original magazine – fiction, poetry, artwork and critiques of books, music and movies – and brought technology news and reviews into the mix as well. Its design rotated from season to season, but the coffee-hued edition at left was one of my favorites. The current blue design was brought online in late 2001.

Inkblots was built and maintained using Adobe Photoshop, Adobe ImageReady, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe GoLive, and a little handcoded HTML, and other programs as necessary including Metacreations Bryce and Fractal Design Painter.

The next step
Inkblots has been updated by hand ever since I first brought it online. The next step for this project is going to be the creation of a content management system built with MySQL and PHP.