This Web Site's Designer Is Not a Japanophile

By mlumadue on April 4, 2020

I've been working on moving this old site o'mine to Drupal 8 (still on-going since this site was originally built using a Linotype machine), and I started to notice a pattern in design selection. So there is a lot of elements from 17th & 18th century Japanese block printing, cool neon Tokyo street scenes, and a reference or two to Mt. Fuji.

Well, trust me this is all by accident. The decision on these design choices were purely based on the availability of licensing free graphic elements and an unusually descriptive domain name. It has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I, as the site's designer...

  • Own and display six different Space Battleship Yamato models
  • Have a complete collection of Area 88 Viz comic reprints
  • Think Yoko Kanno is a genius
  • Have a Medicom Combat Joe Godzilla Suit figure mint in box
  • Know what "protoculture" is
  • Insist everyone spend a whole day at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery anytime we're in Washington DC
  • Miss visiting Yaohan Plaza
  • Consider Cowboy Bebop high art
  • Have only ever purchased Akira Kurosawa films on Amazon Video
  • Listen to city pop and vaporwave so much it drives my family crazy

These things completely inconsequential to the design decisions made on this site. I just wanted to make sure that was all cleared up.

Oh, and I needed a reason to install and start configuring Media features. Enjoy the video...