Friday, November 27, 2015

New Look & News


I promised a post on writing "risky" topics like racism, genocide, substance abuse, etc. via Twitter, and I will not disappoint you, faithful readers. However, I thought it best to explain the new look (and why I haven't been present in the past month).

A new look was promised in October via Twitter, but I did not deliver...so now, I present to you the new and updated INKSPOT. Inkspot is now a fully functional artsy-looking blog with it's own hashtag (#inkspot) and even a fancy new FAQs and EDITING page set up on the top taps bar. I changed up the design of the blog in an attempt to make it look more clean-cut and professional without being too girly (ahem the pink of the last design) or too amateur (ahem the pink of the last design). It took a few hours to finish the look; I even tried downloading fancy blogger templates, but obviously that didn't work out too well. I was forced to design it based on my limited technical abilities and the extremely small gallery of blogger templates/fonts/colors/designs. I'm pretty happy with the result.

With a new look comes a new focus, and that focus is simply re-stating the previously developed purpose of this blog--to provide fun, insightful, unique, and quality informational posts on all things writing. Based on some of the comments I've received over the years, I've learned how to hone the strengths of this blog to create something my readers have referred to as "non-preachy" and "relatable"--which I think are awesome words to describe what I'm trying to do. My purpose is to provide thoughtful help and tips with a fun twist, not to preach to the masses and demand to be respected. We're all in this writing adventure together, and I'm positive I have as much to learn from you as you have to learn from me.

That being said, welcome to Inkspot. Thanks for hanging with me for these three years. I hope you plan to stay a little longer, because there are some fun things up ahead!

Sneak Peek into the Future:

  • Post on including risky topics like racism, genocide, addiction, abuse, mental illness, etc. even in your fantasy/sci-fi/non-modern-based novels
  • Post on appreciating movies separately from their books
  • Writing contests, polls, prompt games, and more
  • New editing offer--send your stuff to me to get edited! (see EDITING page)
  • New FAQs page
  • Posting more of my own writing--including poems and excerpts
  • Posting more of YOUR writing--via contests and prompt games
It's gonna be a fun year, ya'll.

Until next time!

~Ana

3 comments:

Sam Tattershall said...

The blog looks great! You did it very well. It looks very professional. ^.^ I'm actually excited about your new pages too!

I'm looking forward to some of your posts about 'risky' topics too. Not many writers are brave enough to speak out and post about those. (maybe me XP) I applaud you and eagerly await some insight.

This is indeed going to be a fun year, I can already tell! :D

Thanks for posting! (seriously, I love the new look. XD)

Rachel said...

Ana!

I love the new look! :D Can you help me? ;) Or at least give some tips on what you did to update to this? I'd love to work on my own blog as well...

Ecstatic for your new posts as well! I need to get my blogging presence back into the...world...
Can't wait!

Rachel

Anastasia Cross said...

Thanks, Sam! I'm excited to write the post on risky topics. It should be interesting. Thanks for the comment!

Rachel, I'd love to give you a few tips on how I managed this look with the extremely limited blogger/wordpress templates. I love the Cutest Blog on the Block backgrounds for my blog (I've been using the same one for a really long time now haha). They have a TON of different kinds, so I suggest looking there for ideas on a theme and such! As for everything else, it just depends on the feel you want to go for. I'm all about the clean-cut, geometric, simple design I attempted for Inkspot. This was accomplished after sifting through a lot of templates and figuring out which one would do what I wanted it to do. I think I ended up going with one of the Awesome Templates on Blogger. Then it just came down to color scheme and mechanics. I changed a bunch of text to all upper case too, in order to attempt that geometric clean look. I would have gone black and white, but personally, I don't like the sharp contrast (one of the reasons I love the white/gray background). I opted for softer grays when it came to text color to keep it easy on the eyes. However, for some reason I only had four working fonts on the template fixer thing on blogger, so actually this could be a lot cooler with different fonts. However, at the moment, I'm pretty happy with it. :)

Thanks for the comment and if you have any more questions, please let me know!

~Ana