About me

F(r)iend ⟡ 34 ⟡ Male ⟡ United Kingdom

Why create this website?

I've been into illustration and graphic design as a hobby since the early-mid 2000s but I never really had a proper place to call my own. Even before then I always enjoyed drawing and crafts as a child. Neocities caught my attention and it was an instant hint of familiarity and nostalgia for what I like to call "the old internet".

Y'know..the time before unsocial media sites and smartphones started to take over and everything became very bland corporate and sterile.

I remember losing a lot of the websites and communities I loved one by one because of the rapid changing pace of the internet. I spent a vast amount of time lurking on forums (anyone remember signature design competitions?), Myspace and Geocities. In their place were boring profiles with little to no customization options (and let's not forget how toxic these places have become). I guess like many people, I miss seeing individual style and personality, I miss the imperfections, I miss the community..I miss the "wide" in "world wide web".

What inspired this site design?

Back in the day, I used to visit many hobby, anime and band websites and found the different designs so inspiring. I always wanted my slice of that. By the time I got good enough at coding to make a decent functioning site, everyone had migrated to what bacame the start of social media. The design of this website itself takes a slight bit of inspiration from one of my favourite web designs of the mid-2000s, the official website for the band Bullet For My Valentine, during the album cycle for their album "The Poison". I rememeber my young teenage self being obsessed with how they got it to look so cool at the time.

I aimed to have a similar colour pallette for the site while having my own spin on it. I've also always been drawn to the darker, gothic and medieval types of art, imagery and lore.

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