I discovered “From My Bottom Step” through the monthly Geek Dinners in London when owner Greg Fowler started attending regularly earlier this year. I was impressed with the content he was publishing, but I wasn’t with the sites design. Particularly the photograph he was using as a logo in his sites masthead.

Greg needed a proper logo and a more cohesive brand, so I approached him with some concepts at the following meet up and he was sold.

As with any logo the first step was to sketch out ideas, I’m not terribly good at drawing (as you can see) but this process helps flesh out ideas and often allows new ideas to flow much easier from revision to revision then possible on screen with a mouse. Once a handful of concepts are on paper I can then take the best of them to the computer and mock them up in Corel Draw.

The primary concept I went with was to represent the step aspect of the name in type using perspective, size and weight. However the divergence in my sketching was in deciding how to include the image of Greg as a child on his Grandparents steps, or if to include it at all.

I experimented with the figure and the various perspectives to go with it, but in the end it seemed out of place, forced even, to include it despite having so much brand equity. Rather I settled on a simple typographic logo set in Futura with varying degrees of kerning and sizes to create perspective as if looking at a set of stairs. The colour black was selected for it’s strength and versatility, giving the effect more visual impact. The website that followed used the same colour pallet to give the content more prominence and alleviate the noise often found on news websites.

I did end up finding a way to include the iconic image of Greg during the development of the new website by making it the sites favicon, as well as putting it in the footer as a logo for “Fowler Media”, a parent brand for Greg to apply to his network of sites. At launch the reaction from people was overwhelmingly positive at it’s continued inclusion, instantly being a favorite element of the new site.

Today the new From My Bottom Step launched with a brand new design and added functionality provided by Leschinski Design.

The site has already recived some attention at Dan Brown’s Cool Blog Name to Come and Pat Dryburgh’s blog where he described the new design in a word, fantastic.

From My Bottom Step (FMBS) is described as “a community activist’s online, independent, local source of news about London, Ontario” and focused on issues like pedestrian rights, accessibility, environmental concerns, public transit, and municipal politics. It was recently the subject in my review on London’s Independent Media.

Check it out at www.frommybottomstep.com

Here is a quick peak at the brand new site I’m working on for From My Bottom Step. I recently reviewed the site in my post on London’s Independent Media, and have since been working with Greg Fowler to take his site to the next level. We’re hoping to launch the site to the public mid October at his new domain www.frommybottomstep.com

Let me know what you think in the comments.

In March some friends and I attended the London Indie Media Fair, to promote our monthly new media meet up, and I had the chance to sit in on some workshops they were holding. The first I attended was “The Importance of Independent Media” by Anthony Verberckmoes, and while it didn’t explain how it was important, it did discuss how the “mainstream media” is sophisticated propaganda perpetuated by rich white men. It wasn’t a surprise to hear Anthony espouse these sort of views, independent media is often very critical of the way the mainstream media operates and even markets itself, despite some of the similarities between the two, but if independent media wants to gain acceptance as the news source of choice it could definitely benefit from these evil tools of the mainstream media; branding.

Branding the idea of independent and user generated media, capturing its diversity, and building a community around it is key to reach out to those who want to be able to identify sources of passionate and free voices. But better brands are needed, and they need to be better than anything mainstream has to offer before they can grow.

In this article I’m going to take a look at six of London’s most prominent alternative media sources online, and go over what they do well, where they could use some work, and where they fail.
Continue reading ‘State of London’s Independent Media.’