Oingo Boingo’s song “Insanity”, featuring one of my favorite paintings, Veronese’s “Feast in the House of Levi”.

Aside from design, one of my favorite things in life is music. As a way to experiment with design and typography, I would often deign pieces based on lyrics from songs. This piece is from the band Therapy?, and their song “This ship is sinking”. I designed this while going through a breakup, and the lyrics fit my mood perfectly.

I went back to school in the Fall of 2001 for my Bachelor’s in Art History. As a result, much of my design became directly influenced by the great masters of art. These two pieces are based on the work of Joseph Cornell, who worked almost exclusively with collage. Seen here is my own collage, using images of Cornell’s work. Click on the images for a larger version.

Splash page and interior site design for Disquiet. Pop-up windows and tiny text was pretty big at this point. I’d maintain this kind of site structure for several years. Note that the actual content was almost an afterthought to the design, being shoved into a narrow column on the right side.

I started using the name Disquiet around 2000. I was introduced to the word via my favorite band, Therapy?. It was on the back of their record called Pleasure Death, and it said “Disquiet by Michael, Andy Fyfe.” I was taken by the word itself, and liked what it meant when I eventually looked it up.

Over the next several years, I would use Disquiet for portfolio work, personal interests, and a combination of both. As a result, you’ll see the site named several different ways as the focus shifted to and from these three different categories.

A later (2001) design for Square Blue. By this time, I was fully enveloped in what was going on in the design community, hence the link references to Design is Kinky and Surfstation. I was pretty amazed by this design when I opened it up this morning. I think it turned out really well, and would even consider using it again if anyone still used splash pages. Once again, this was a portal page that directed you to the personal sites of SB members.