The Design

The design consists of Japanese-inspired elements. The main lattice is a simplified homage to tategu doors and windows. Resize your browser either horizontally or vertically to see a subtle sliding effect of the lattice overlay. Just as a shoji screen commonly has three panels, site content has been divided into three columns.

Background tiles used with the text are similar to common origami-style paper patterns. The other green backgrounds around the content are based on Japanese maple tree leaves. Additional traditional accents are provided by the bamboo header tile and cherry blossom overlay.

The Asian character I use in the header, favicon, and as a gravatar is the Chinese character for "ox" in the Chinese animal zodiac. I was born in the Year of the Ox and have been using it as my personal icon for many years. It reminds me to be patient, that all hard work can be accomplished over time.

Category:Design

A Little About Me

I’m a writer, published nonfiction author, and sometimes technical editor.  I aspire to publish fiction, and I am working on a number of speculative fiction projects. My focus is mainly science fiction, but I also write fantasy and horror, especially as cross-genre. I’ve brought my site back online to connect with other like-minded writers and the publishing market in general.

I’m also a professional web developer specializing in user interface design.  I have two decades of experience developing on the Internet and have worked in a variety of roles, ranging from graphic designer and interface systems analyst to webmaster and network architect.   I sometimes produce graphic art with photos or illustrations, and I have an interest in photography.

My university education eventually resulted in a combined degree in Computer Science and English.  For the former, I specialized in artificial intelligence and cognitive science.  My English studies focused on early British literature with a fair bit of Writing on the side.

I’m also a devoted husband and father, and our family enjoys raising and training dogs.

Site Background

This is the ninth design for my personal site since I first created a website for myself in 1994. It’s been online at my kevinhatch.com domain since 1998.  Historically the site has been purely custom development, but in the most recent iterations it used the PostNuke CMS for some backend management and now employs WordPess for all content administration.