The Most Important Thing Right Now!
Older 2023
For years, I used to write an annual blog on my website that I just called "older," a defiant brand of declaration that the world had not managed to end me just yet, that I was still standing, apologies to Elton John. To make these blogs complete, I took a photo of myself, face first, to chronicle the changes time draped across my shoulders.
In 1999, I created my first logo for myself -- an interpolation of an image of a Black man in a suit, which had me add a fedora, and blur it to obscure its origins. I now consider the work amateurish, but I was an amateur. I had room to grow. I don�t even have copies of it anymore -- I had to dig through the Wayback Machine to find a look at it, and at such a low resolution.
By 2003, I was getting divorced but I�d grown massively as a graphic designer and web producer, coding tens of thousands of web pages personally and overseeing the building of many more. I used a Kodak digital camera to take a photo of myself, wearing an inherited high crown, banded brim fedora. I took that photo into one of my favorite places -- Photoshop -- and created the logo that remains the face of the Operative Network, as it�s never really needed any updating for me. Inspired in part by V For Vendetta and in part by a line from Sting�s "Moon Over Bourbon Street" ("the brim of my hat hides the eye of a beast"), it�s still one of my favorite works I�ve ever created with my own hand.
In 2015, I hung up my own shingle at this URL, and I needed to come up with a new logo. The third one with my driver�s cap was something I conceived, executed by my children�s mother, was more open. One of my eyes is sorta visible, I�m more open and opening up more about who I am, but still guarded. My story, continuing to evolve as I grew into being a family man, of learning more about how to be vulnerable with people in new ways. It�s growth, but clearly still limited (personally and technically, as its vector based design sacrificed much more fidelity than I originally anticipated).
In 2022, I�ve learned a lot of very interesting lessons. The mother of my children left me the day before Valentine�s Day to start another relationship. I was diagnosed as neurodivergent with"very high functioning autism spectrum disorder." My son went away to college. I started dating someone who makes me enormously happy. I was part of a Kickstarter campaign for a 5e DND campaign setting book that was 453 percent funded to the tune of over $54,000. I spent months working with some of the best editors, artists and creatives I�ve ever known, having more fun writing than I ever have in my life, only to have Hasbro/Wizards of the Coast endanger the future of the platform. I enjoyed the company of professionals while I sat on the set of All American with my daughter. I saw the release of a supernatural western comic book miniseries, with more requested from the publisher. I got sick, got better, I found a kind of peace within and a sense of joy throughout, and without fail, I always kept moving ahead. The logo must as well. I�m embarking on a new chapter in my story, with a lot of similar elements but some new cast members. That means, to me, that it was time to change some things, which brings me to iconography.
The latest iteration of my logo builds on my 2003 methodology -- my iPhone worked to take the photo, without an obscuring angle this time. My command of Photoshop is as good as it�s ever been, and while listening for keywords in a meeting at my job, the new story emerged on my screen.
No more white backgrounds, there�s been too much sacrifice for that. The white lines still dance along my periphery, as the language I speak and the population that surrounds me on screen. There�s a story in my eyes right from The High Republic, "for light and life," as I have been focused on creativity and the relationships around me. I�m not conforming by dressing up -- I�m in a t-shirt, as I am about 98 percent of the time. More than anything else, for the first time, I�m looking straight ahead, no longer masking and pretending to be normal. This is the direction forward, unflinching.
Normally I�m very product-focused in this space, but I�m trying new things as I am again "older." "Let�s get weird," I keep saying. Everything is on the table as I "elasticize the possibilities," as a wise woman advised me to do.
While I�m loath to reference James Cameron these days, I feel a lot like the end of Terminator 2 -- driving into the night with every possibility ahead of me, free of having to be who I used to be. Despite the lifelong belief I�d never make it this far, I�m fifty years old. As a Black man, I sure as heck don�t take that for granted.
Best of all? With all I�ve accomplished (and it was pointed out to me recently that I�m not exactly a slouch, with a pretty solid list of bona fides), I feel like I�m just getting started.
I hope to continue to vex white supremacy and producing interesting ideas for many, many, many years to come.