Mark Forrester - Independent digital designer and online entrepreneur

A couple months ago I was introduced to the South African journalist, media analyst and commentator on Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Arthur Goldstuck by Ramon Thomas. I was asked if I would like to get involved with the branding of Arthur Goldstuck’s new blog, The Big Change.

The Big Change has been around since 2001 in the form of an e-newsletter. The e-newsletter focuses on business strategy and technology and is authored by numerous well qualified business executives. It has a considerable amount of subscribers and the aim is to now use the wordpress blogging platform to further enhance the readership and subscriber interaction. (more…)

I was recently asked by Tertia Albertyn to re-design her Typepad weblog.Tertia’s blog, So Close, was this year’s winner of the South African Blog Awards. Her blog focuses on life after infertility and has a huge amount of readers, it has even featured in a lot of South African press. It was therefore not a hard decision to take up the responsibility of the job. Tertia was a great client to deal with and gave me very few guidelines to follow, I could therefore play around with what ever creative ideas I had. It had to have an African feel though, and include her lovely children in some way.

This was my first Typepad theme design and I must say it was much easier than I thought it might be. Typepad is a very powerful system, and with a professional license it allows for heavy customization of the stylesheet files giving you complete control of the blog layout.

I hope you like the end result.

My latest blog design has been for the non-profit organisation, Homecoming Revolution. Their blog has been created to provide a platform for open, honest and most importantly, constructive debate.

“The Homecoming Revolution is a non-profit, non-governmental organisation that is independent and in no way affiliated to any political party. Contrary to popular belief, we are NOT influenced by any hidden societies, political organisations or propagandist movements. Nor do we bow to pressure from any groups that think we should be touting any particular agenda. We are sponsored by First National Bank because they are a Proudly South African bank that believes in our country. Our aim is to bring the skills back home and to highlight the opportunities in South Africa. We offer advice, information and services to aid people with their homecoming decision and, ultimately the journey.…This is not at any cost…the decision must be right for the individual concerned.”

The new blog will replace the Homecoming Revolution forum that has over 9000 members. The thought is to encourage more constructive communication, over a more sophisticated platform. Users must register in order to comment, eliminating any distasteful anonymous comments that have been popping up in the forum.

Surf on over to Homecoming Revolution and have a read over some of the awesome homecoming stories and South African news.

As you may have read here previously I have been working on projects for the London based Retna Pictures for a few months now. A couple months ago I re-designed their company website. Retna pictures is one of the largest independent photo agencies in the world. Their unique collection includes celebrity, music, stock/lifestyle, fashion and event photography from the turn of the century to the present day.

Retna Pictures requested my services to design and implement a blog, www.rmusic.co.uk, that would cover stories about the iconic music photos and the photographers who took them, as well as music gossip and gig reviews.

The site is still very fresh, but promises to unveil many fascinating stories, with guest writers including Michael Putland, who photographed John Lennon, The Beegees, The Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Elton John, Madonna, and the list goes on and on.

Rmusic’s design is far from the stereotypical Web 2.0 wordpress theme design, it hopefully portrays rock and roll in its truest form. I had great fun with the staff at Retna shooting a collage of digital stills, converse shoes, action figures, cigarette butts, guest passes, and fridge magnets.