nate abdo

Half Eared Hound Pictures

I don’t often do a lot of illustrations. Mostly because I’ve never been that great at it. But I’m a believer that forcing yourself out of your comfort zone is a smart way to live – and work. So when a buddy of mine asked for a logo for a new photography endeavor he was a part of I thought, “hey this might be an opportunity to get my feet wet.  Here I created a simple illustration of a bloodhound – the dog breed the company is named after. It’s over true but also classic. A badge and ribbon complete MORE

Abstract Intellects Artist Site

Abstract Intellects abstractintellects.com is a music producer-slash-artist-slash-demo site I created for a talented musician. The site’s presentation highlights a efficient and textured layout that mirrors the songwriter’s own style. This was also the first site I created for which I had to build a custom music player and downloader. In its initial publication it relies on static assets, however I built it intentionally with Google’s Firebase system so the artist and I have a foundation to make it easily more dynamic (perhaps with a custom content management system) in the future.

Abstract Intellects Logo

Simple text-based logos are usually my favorite. It is, to me, the most effective and simplest method to create brand recognition. Immediately you can link the name of an artist or company with what you see, without needing to wait for an icon to become saturated and understood. Still being simple is easier said than done. With this logo, the artist wanted a graffiti style but still modern and clean. The contrast in typefaces used helps build this and the weight behind “Abstract” ensures legibility.

T-Salon Logo Redesign

Companies change and grow over time. As they do, their branding needs (and tastes) change. It’s expected that from time to time a logo you made a few years ago may no longer be the right look and feel for that company today. So when a former client comes back and asks for a redesign – for me it’s an exciting endeavor. For T-Salon, the changes were to closer match the owner’s style but it also made a clearer link to the state where the hair salon is located.

Inkwealthy Logo – 2018

As I work more and more on my own projects and entrepreneurial endeavors I find myself consistently wanting to readjust or tweak the presentation of branding elements. Sometimes it’s a simple color adjustment. Other times it’s a rather drastic. The latter is true of the latest update to the logo for the site-as-a-service I created, Inkwealthy. The new logo, goes back to the original spelling. And while the colors are the same it relies more on iconography instead of simple lines and text.

Why Don’t We Know This – Child Theme

Recently a few of my colleagues launched a new podcast and website geared toward edu-tainment. Normally, I create all of the web-presence for my projects from the ground up but for this one I wanted to try something a little different. Specifically, I wanted to try a pre-built template and just build on top of that, mostly because I was pretty slammed with some other projects and wanted to get something up quickly. What I learned is that there are some really solid theme’s for WordPress that give you a lot of assume tools already, but if you’re savvy with MORE

Why Don’t We Know This?

If you’ve been following me and my pals over at CatBear for a bit you’ll know we’ve been thinking about adding some new stuff to our library o’ content. Well we did that in the most CatBear way possible and essentially threw a nuke at everything we had, then made a whole new podcast. We wanted to focus our efforts into a making a new brand that was entertaining, useful and relatable. So we had a couple of meetings, threw out a bunch of ideas and then consequently threw away a bunch of ideas. In the end we landed on MORE

Chomp Gloves – eCommerce Site

The website I created for Chomp Gloves is a simple, custom eCommerce site that features a hero carousel and a tiled gallery for the shop section. It also incorporates the Shopify Buy SDK, one of the most popular hosted eCommerce solutions available these days. Additionally, the one-page design leverages the Bootstrap framework making it incredibly mobile friendly as well. Check it out here chompgloves.com Plus, if you’re a Florida Gators fan, really you need a pair of these!

Inkwealthy – Website

Inkwealthy is a site-as-a-service I developed myself. It’s goal is to help authors find and connect with readers quickly and easily to read their works and polish them before they are published. I designed the site with a couple of things in mind. First, I wanted it to be incredibly simple and minimalistic. You’ll notice it’s three colors Red, White and Blue. I chose these colors primarily because they reminded me of typical pen and paper (blue for the author’s pen, red for the editor’s and of course white as the paper). Second, I wanted everything to be chiefly vertical. With MORE

Inkwellthy Beta

All I can say is: finally!  Inkwellthy has been in development for literally years at this point. If you’ve read my previous blog posts about it you know I’ve picked it up and put it down several times over the past couple years. I’m pretty sure I’ve nuked everything I made and rebuilt from scratch at least twice.  But, finally inkwellthy is ready for a public beta.  First, a little about what inkwellthy is. It’s a place meant to help bring writers and readers together. These days more and more folks are publishing written material on their own. Bloggers, DIY MORE