I mentioned earlier that the re-design of this website would have been impossible without Tim Gasperak, so I want to use this opportunity to introduce you to Tim and his work. (more)

After I experienced a server meltdown last year - which left the blog offline for almost a week - I re-installed everything on a new server, picking, yet again, the least hideous Movable Type template. I don’t quite remember, but I think I wrote a blog post, looking for someone who could help me with the design (and related issues). That’s how I met Tim, who emailed me.

I asked Tim to send me a few words about himself, here is what he wrote.

I’m a creative director and design manager with 15 years of experience guiding clients and leading teams in brand strategy, design, and user experience for interactive media and physical products. I specialize in working with clients to help them articulate and clarify their goals, forge the creative vision on projects, and lead the design and production efforts to make it all real. Over the years I’ve worked with clients such as Nike, Apple, PlayStation, National Geographic, United Airlines, Yahoo!, and FDIC. Of all the projects I’ve worked on, I’m most proud of the educational work done in collaboration with FusionSpark Media for the Florida Department of Environmental Protection and One World Journeys. For those projects we won numerous awards from the Society of Environmental Journalists and the Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival.

I’m also a photographer who once aspired to succeed in the advertising and editorial worlds. My interest and focus is in photographing people in environments, landscapes, and portraits. I was selected for PDN Magazine’s Photography Annual in 2007 and I’ve won best in category awards in Art Wolfe’s Environmental Photography Invitational, ASMP’s Image competition, and Advertising Photographers of America competitions, among others.

I also asked Tim to send me some of his photos; you can see them in the gallery on the side (one of the many improvements he suggested). There are many more on his website.

In an earlier post, I talked about the various new aspects of the site. These aspects arose from a combination of the things I had in mind and the things Tim brought to the table. While there was a lot of overlap, Tim had many ideas and suggestions that I had never even imagined. Some the challenges that intrigued him, he wrote, were:

• How to take 8+ years and thousands of blog posts and make them more accessible to a reading audience.
• How to honor the work of the photographers by providing a means for readers to browse the work in a more visual way, when the web site was never set up to work that way, neither functionally nor in intent.
• How to craft a reading experience and an editorial approach that is commensurate with both the writing and the work of the photographers, particularly at a time when long-form reportage, reading and critical thinking are becoming increasingly rare, especially online.

I cannot stress enough how much credit Tim deserves for all the ideas, suggestions, and work he put into this new site.