Blog Post

Retro Portfolio: ClarkRasmussen.com Redesign

After the O6 Development site was built, I no longer needed to host my portfolio on ClarkRasmussen.com. Because that site was entirely built around my portfolio, I redesigned it as more of a portal leading to my other sites.

The lack of content on the site allowed me to design around an idea that came as a joke from a designer I worked with at the time.

I was in a design meeting for one of the sites that University Relations at Michigan State University was going to be building. Three designers were being asked to submit mock-ups for the site. They were told that whoever had their design chosen would have to spend more time later on working with me to get the design converted from a Photoshop file to an actual web page.

One of the designers, acting as though he didn’t want to do the extra work, then joked, “Yeah, I think you need a design in black and white based largely on the font ‘Courier.'”

Everyone laughed, as everyone “knows” you can’t make a good design using those elements. I thought I’d give it a try anyway and ClarkRasmussen.com became that attempt.

A view of the ClarkRasmussen.com home page, featuring no color and the Courier font.
A view of the ClarkRasmussen.com home page, featuring no color and the Courier font.

With the site redesigned, I needed to create a new logo/wordmark that matched the new style.

Not having much to work with, I kept the design simple. The wordmark was simply my name in ‘Courier’ inside a box with a black outline. My first name appeared in white text on a black background while my last name was in black on white.

The new header wordmark for ClarkRasmussen.com, designed in black and white and Courier to match the site.
The new header wordmark for ClarkRasmussen.com, designed in black and white and Courier to match the site.

The logo had a retro feel but that was unintentional. By using the Courier font, it was also a bit of a throwback to my junior high school days, when I was an aspiring novelist.


The above text and images were copied directly from my original portfolio as I imported it over to the blog. It was not updated for re-publishing. This project launched in August 2004.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.