about

Retinart

Thoughts on graphic design, creativity and beauty. That'll pretty much sum it up.

From analytical essays on the finer points of typography (get it? You'll laugh later, promise) to interviews with creatives with something special, the goal is to show the creativity and beauty produced by talented people and to hopefully make you think a little different and see things through a different lens.

Alex Charchar

Retinart is written by Alex Charchar. I'm a graphic designer currently living in Queensland, Australia. I graduated from Swinburne in Melbourne, started to work at USQ in the in-house studio and then wanted to develop my knowledge and love for all things creative. From one educational institutional to another.

After far too long thinking about how to do it, I finally did something with the domain I've owned for a number of years for more than getting email about making things bigger. I love clever ideas, elegant solutions and all those pretty things that make us smile, so my (very original) idea was to put together a site dedicted to such things.

The Site

The website is being published using Joomla! 1.5 and a custom template I developed specifically for retinart. Why Joomla? Someone recommended it and on the surface it looks quite fantastic. However, 1.5 was a major upgrade over the previous version and is still in its infancy, which means the forums are busy with people asking questions, but not answering many.

The site currently lives on the servers of Dreamhost.

The typography in the header image, menu and spotted here and there is ATFAntique.

The first version of the site was put up early 2008, after sitting on my hard drive for far too long and the current version went live May 2008, after a stunning realisation that the old design was, well, shit. It took a couple of months to get it together, the longest part being tackling Joomla. I originally wanted to write an article outlining the highs and lows of the redesign, but it turned into more of a mission statement and rant. It does sum up a lot of what went into the redesign and what I want to get out of it though.