On June 18th, 2014, I published my first post as the Geeky Mormon. I can’t believe it has already been a year. I feel like a lot has changed and happened over that year. It’s funny to go back and look at that first post. I didn’t even know how to embed a YouTube video. I think this first year has been a year of change and development as I have tried to figure out what my brand was going to be. Just look at the blog header for some great examples of that change as i have been trying to develop that brand:
This was basically my first header. It was simple and laid the foundation for my brand and the look of the website. From the beginning, I knew I wanted the basic color scheme to be black and white. I have always liked how those two colors look together. They just seem to be really sharp and make each other pop. Most of my early blog titles were similar to this, as I developed categories and had a similar header for each category, almost all of them were white writing on a black background.
Next, I learned how to make photo collages, and my life, and posts, would never be the same. You can see here that the old header is still there, in the bottom corner, but the pictures all represent different geeky things I like. I still do a lot of collages for my featured photos, trying to lure you, the reader, in with lots of pictures.
My next step was to work with my designer to come up with a logo that would represent the site and be quickly recognizable. When you are working with a designer, you should always have an idea of what you want so that you can explain it to them and they can just perfect it. If you’re ever unsure, using the templates from somewhere like GraphicSprings is a great place to start. You’ll see me mention my designer frequently, and she has been more than wonderful to work with. We have a very tight working relationship. Tight like unto a dish, if you will. My designer is my wife, who has quite the eye for aesthetics. I wanted to continue to do the white on a black background, and kind of described for her what i wanted the logo to be, and she came up with this. These two headers were ideas that we ended up rejecting. Why? My wife smartly pointed out that the white log just didn’t look right. I hesitantly agreed. I was really anxious to keep it white on a black background. In the end, though, I love my wife more than anything and I trust her judgement. So she helped me come up with this:
The black logo on the white background just looks a lot better. This is why she is my designer, because she knows what looks good and why. This header and logo was one that we had for a long time, and it was my favorite, until I went and did something crazy. I shaved off my beard. All of a sudden the Geeky Mormon was beardless, and I was beginning to get questions on whether I was going to change my logo or not. I decided it needed to be changed and asked again for my wife to help me with it. She was really sad to see this logo go. She really liked, and with good reason. It was really cool. However, that led to our current logo, which can be seen above on our header. This new logo has grown on me, and I like it even better than the Beardy. You can see that it is still black and white, but the white is more prevalent, and I like how it looks in contrast to the black of the blog.
I have tried to write about a variety of topics on the blog, and some posts have been more successful than others. For example, our first ever Geek-Craft Post, featuring a pattern and instructions for a crocheted Ninja Turtle pencil bag. This is a post that was written back in August of last year and just exploded in popularity. We continue to get hit on it to this day. If you haven’t checked it out, then take the time to do that right now:
Star Trek always seems to be a popular topic for the site, and whenever I write about it, it seems to get a lot of attention. One post, in particular, led to our biggest day ever hits wise. It was when I recently ranked the Star Trek series from my least favorite to my favorite:
So, what does this next year hold for the Geeky Mormon? For starters, my brother, J. Leonard Dietz (the 90s Kid) and I are trying to get our new podcast off the ground. It is a really simple concept. Basically, it’s two brothers who are just sitting there talking about geeky stuff. We call it the Geekopolis Podcast,and I think it’s pretty good. We just released our second episode, which was all about some of our favorite fictional fathers, and it’s worth a listen:
We hit over 1000 Facebook likes this last year.
That was just awesome, but my goal is to get it over 3000 over this next year, as well as focusing on getting more followers on other social media sites like Twitter and Google+.
I have also been toying with the idea of bringing on some guest bloggers, and maybe even creating a stable of regular contributors. It has become a lot of work to keep up the blog by myself and the podcast and devote some time to my children and wife (they are so needy). If you regularly read this blog and would like to contribute, either as a one time guest blogger or a regular contributor, please let me know. I would love to hear from you. Let me know what ideas you might have for contributions and what your areas of expertise might be. Right now, there would be no monetary compensation for said posts, and I don’t know if that would change down the road. It would be some good exposure, and your posts would be tweeted out and Facebooked through the Geeky Mormon sites. Plus if you have a site of your own, I would be happy to promote that site through the same avenues (what goes around comes around). If you are interested, please email me at [email protected].
If there are things you would like to see me cover or discuss on the site in the coming months, please let me know. I am always open to suggestions.
Finally, thank you for reading. The fact that there are people out there who may or may not be related to me who read this blog ever just astonishes me, and I am very grateful for it.
