Beautiful 2.0 has become a much bigger hit than I had anticipated. In just two weeks, it has been awarded & featured by 23 prestigious websites. When it was launched, the Alexa rank was over 10 million - that's 10 millionth most popular website. Today, it stands at just over 800,000. At this rate, the site will reach its initial goal of 500k in a few days. The goal beyond that is to be below the 100k mark, and sustain it.

Some of the interest with Beautiful 2.0 is the fact that it is not only a css gallery, it is also a flash gallery, web 2.0 gallery and overall artistic resource. The site does not feature every excellently rendered css or flash website; it caters only to those websites that show exceptional artistic quality. It has become extremely selective, only admitting about one tenth of the submissions it receives on a daily basis.

This gives artists and designers a chance to forget about having to have a huge amount of content, being popular, mainstream or even likable to most css galleries. It gives them a chance to be noticed for the pure artistry they have achieved in their design - even if their website just so happens to be only one page.

Beautiful 2.0 doesn't look at W3C compliance, clean code or cookie cutter css. It looks at the visual communication and artistic quality of the website itself. It's a breath of fresh air to most web artists out there. On the contrary, it isn't going to be very popular with most web designers out there that follow trends or think as long as everything is correct, functional, and clean, they will be admitted to any high quality gallery. Not this gallery, sorry.

If you're interested in seeing the daily submissions, check out beautiful 2.0 or subscribe to the feed. You can also follow Beautiful 2.0 on twitter.

Thanks for all the support!

I am pleased to anounce that a project I've been working on for nearly six months (off and on) is finally complete. The name of the site is Beautiful 2.0 - it is a web design and CSS gallery that is dedicated to beautiful web 2.0 websites. It is much more "pure gallery" than many other CSS gallery websites out there. It is much more geared towards artistic sites that are extremely well designed. Most websites that are considered and placed within the gallery could be works of art you might (might) hang up on your wall.

The site features 10 website submissions per page, with access to an archive that opens up on a per-month basis. One of the things I am most proud of (sadly, nothing to be proud of for you uber developers out there) is the fact that you can search for website submissions according to color preference. So, not only do you see the latest submissions, but you can also search by date and color.

There is no rating system, as I did not want to have to explain myself or those I trust to submit websites to me. The goal of "pure gallery" was something very important to keep in mind whilst building this website. I did concede, however, to allowing comments on each submission. This should allow people to compliment, rip apart, or otherwise start a dialogue based on each submission.

Please take a look at the site - add it to your favorites, follow it on twitter (you'll see the twitter link in several places) or tell someone about it that you think might be interested or might even wish to submit a website of their own.

Recently I was lucky enough to be presented with the opportunity to edit some wedding pictures. While the wedding photographer did a great job, I have some skills of my own that I can bring to the table. As far as computer-aided design, photo manipulation is one of my first loves, and so I was excited to take on this project for them.

The bride and groom were somewhat disappointed with some of their pictures. Before the edit, this sunset picture did not have any clouds in the sky and the bride and groom were a bit too underexposed. So, I corrected the lighting and color, and painted in a beautiful sunset behind them. This is an example of some of the more "subtle" effects I can add to photographs.

This picture is an example that took a bit more complex editing skills. It consists of 3 photographs. One of the bride and groom, one of the outside seating area where the couple got married, and another of the bride's extended train. I composited the photos together, took out unneeded chairs, color corrected and added lighting and clouds to the sky. Also, the further away from the happy couple, the less color there is in this photograph. This image is a bit more symbolic, surreal and styelized, and is more indicative of my speciality.

The third and last example is a surreal and fantasy art representation of the bride and her flower girl. I attempted to make this look as much like a surrealist painting as possible. While not every client wants something this close to fantasy art, many are interested in seeing something extra special and custom that came from their wedding, made to order just for them. It was incredibly fun (as well as time consuming) to produce something like this, but it was well worth it. The client absolutely loves the images, and may even print a large version of this image on canvas.

I'm looking forward to more projects like this, as it is definitely more along the lines of what I am interested in doing with photography. I'm hoping for more commissions and requests for this type of work, and may eventually set up a separate art gallery site to support it.

Thanks for reading my blog! If you have any questions or comments, don't hesitate to leave one!

The above image is the latest commissioned artwork I have produced. I was contacted by a very nice client that desired a very singular look to his custom artwork. He wanted specific clothing, faces and body types, as well as special details regarding the surrounding environment. It is very rare to find a client that not only knows what I can do, but also knows exactly what they want. This Star Wars themed artwork was not only a joy to work on in that respect, but also because I simply love to do commissioned artwork for clients.

When I first launched the new Castle Crest Productions, I had the intent to sell web design and search engine optimization almost exclusively. I have since found that most of my potential clients use large corporations for web design and optimization. While this realization was disheartening, I realized that my bread and butter did not have to be web design and SEO.

I begun to use crowdsourcing websites such as 99designs to sell most of my custom logo design, which is a path that has led to great success. Meanwhile, I have been contacted to produce and edit videos for several clients, including The Hubless Wheel project and the Hexigames Intro found on my videography page. Most recently I have been contacted to produce music videos for a successful local musician.

In short, I have found that some of my most niche design abilities have become desireable enough to warrant more attention. I hope that my experience here will give hope to designers out there that are either struggling or just starting out. Diversify your abilities, advertise your successes and be open to projects you didn't expect or don't specialize in. Ride the wave.

I don't specialize in anything anymore. If I'm working on a project, that's what I specialize in. I'm not just a web developer, video editor, digital painter or optimizer. I'm a creative director. No - better than that; I'm a designer, and proud of it.

As many of you know, I have been participating in crowdsourcing websites such as 99designs that allows a designer to compete in design contests for money. These are not typical contests mind you, they are set up on the website by actual companies in need of design services. These companies or individuals may need a logo, a website template, a t-shirt, or some other type of brand collateral. Many of these individual contests feature literally hundreds of designers clamoring for the winning spot.

For many freelance or beginning designers, this may seem like a dream come true. In many ways, they've found a place where they don't have to wait for clients - they are readily available and spelling out exactly what they want done. Even to an experienced designer, a crowdsourcing website may be just what the doctor ordered for an in-between project design fix with a possibility of cash.

There are many good things about these crowdsourcing websites - a designer can design for whatever client they want, when they want, based on the type of project they are interested in at that moment in time. The designer also gets lots of practice designing for a variety of different projects that, winning or not, can still be added to personal or company portfolios. This type of design experience can be invaluable to many designers that are trying to grow their versatility or hone their specific style.

Unfortunately, these crowdsourcing websites may also be the worst thing to ever happen to the design profession and community. AIGA (the American Institute for Graphic Arts) is currently fighting the very concept of design crowdsourcing, saying that the very concept is against everything the institute has been fighting for and has believed in for decades. AIGA has been fighting for designer rights, pay rate and respect ever since its creation in 1914. Currently, AIGA has more than 22,000 members nationwide.

Instead of hiring a designer (short or long term) for design projects and paying them for comps, revisions, and final outputs, companies are now able to use these crowdsourcing websites to pay a fraction of the cost it would normally, in return for literally hundreds of designers to supply them with free design comps.

In AIGA's opinion, this hurts the entire design community by making the designers work for free. Worse, many new or "green" designers don't know any better and are throwing away hours of work and buckets of cash that they deserve and worked for because companies want free design services and are taking advantage of new technologies to undermine an entire profession.

Sure, it feels good to win a contest. Personally, if I win a contest out of hundreds of designers, it makes me feel good about myself, simple as that. But you won't find me spending more than a few minutes on a logo or website for a contest on a crowdsourcing website. No way, no how. I'm a designer by trade, and I get paid for what I do.