FanstRAvaganza 2 is supposedly over, but I’m cheered by the fact RAFrenzy continues on her blog.  I know she’s playing catch-up due to logistics last week, but I get to squee just a few days longer.  She’s focusing on The Voice.  This is totally a win-win situation. Maybe we can get Traxy to contribute her edits, just to lend moral support, yes?

Oddly the biggest thing I miss after the initial rush of the event is – the banner.

This banner headed all the event posts.  This is fantastic photoshopping.  I understand enough about graphics to know a lot of effort was put into this banner.  The composition, choice of profiles,  font, design, color, everything – work beautifully together.  Clients would pay good money for a product like this.  The creator expressly does not want credit, but I just have to acknowledge her work and say, BRAVO.

Because of the length of the event, inspiration was everything.  I derived a certain pleasure of inserting this banner into each day’s post, and admiring its artistry as I brainstormed ideas.  Art can be inspirational and this banner was for me.  It came in flavors of big, small colored and black and white too which I didn’t get to use.  Alas.

I also miss how the event allowed me to experiment with blog composition more than I ordinarily would or even anticipated.  The increased use of images meant paying close attention to the balance of negative and positive space.  A reader is more likely to stop and read something aesthetically pleasing, than a jarring mash-up of words and pictures thrown onto the page without careful thought.  So in addition to the topic, I had to consider which images were relevant to the post, how many, what size, how to place them and where, how did they look in comparison with the words and blank space on the page, and what would the captions say.   Different arrangements created different tones.  For example, Ann Marie’s ficlet required center stage, so specific images had to sparingly highlight the prose, not detract from it.   Interestingly I spent more time editing the posts’ compositions than composing the topics. I suppose this is what its like to be your own copy editor.

I suppose in a way I was trying to turn each post into its own little work of art, to do justice to the banner it followed.  Or it could be me, simply being anal and knowing the posts will be out there on the internet, cached in perpetuity.  I hope for the first, but suspect the last.  Heh, Mr.  Muse is amused, the git.

Oh, almost forgot – shiney!