beyond-sanity.ORG


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Nara is a 22-year-old Dutch communication design student at Carnegie Mellon University, double-
minoring in computer science and Japanese. Her interest lies in discovering how the combination of design with new technology can aid us in finding more creative ways to communicate and exchange information. Her dream is to one day work at the MIT Media Lab. more »

beyond-sanity.ORG is Nara’s personal website and blog, where she writes about topics such as being a design student, her experiences abroad, and her various hobbies such as web design, cooking, and photography. Her current focus is on leading a more balanced life amidst school, work and stress, so she occasionally posts lifestyle improvement tips and zen-inspired ideas. more »

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Many older posts are gone, since I cleaned up the blog in the summer of '08 and wanted a fresh start. Here is what is currently still in the archive:

About the Site

beyond-sanity.ORG was purchased on February 5th, 2004. In its previous incarnation, it was intended primarily as a social blog. Now that I have shut down moonshadow-garden.NET, previously my primary domain, b-s.ORG has become the home of all my personal sites that are not either professional or fandom-related. The name of the domain was inspired by an A Perfect Circle song, or rather the mix that APC did of two covers ("Diary of a Madman" by Ozzy Osbourne and "Lovesong" by The Cure) called "Diary of a Lovesong".

The main site currently features no real content save for an infrequently-updated blog and a couple of info pages like this one. I don't delude myself with the thought that it's very interesting, but I needed a place to express myself and freely engage in design for play rather than for school or work. In the future, I may try to update the blog more frequently and write about design trends, photography, culinary adventures, current events, and lifestyle improvement tips in addition to just talking about what's going on in my life.

About the Layout

This version, which I rather appropriately codenamed designerdy!, is the fourth layout here at b-s.ORG. Version three lasted about a year and was never intended to be more than temporary until I found some actual inspiration for a more concrete concept.

So, here it is: version four, in all its designerdy glory. I'd been wanting to do something using only the CMYK color palette ever since I bought this shirt, and I decided to use the much-needed visual overhaul of this site as a good opportunity to do so. Aside from that, I wanted something that was still fairly minimalist, like version three, because I'm so done with over-Photoshopped layouts, but I also wanted it to be a little more engaging and expressive than the last one. Thus, the current version that you see here was born.

The idea for this layout actually began with the typography. I've taken many typography classes but never really had the opportunity to apply my typography knowledge to my web design because I didn't really practice web design in the time since I began learning about typography, until I got a web design internship in the summer of '09. Since then, I've been learning a lot about CSS typography and following a lot of typography and web design blogs. The layout was also motivated in part by my desire to test out sIFR, which you can see here being used with the very stylish and *free* font Qlassik.

The stork, in case you were wondering, was actually from a project I did during my freshman year. It was completely hand-drawn and then later converted to a vector using Adobe Illustrator. I like it a lot and it's become one of my personal symbols of sorts; it is, for example, featured on the back of my business card.

Hosting

The hosting page is back up and completely updated, so from now on, you should check there to see whether hosting is open and how to go about applying if it is.

Links Out

Here are a few links to sites made by close friends and possibly a couple of other places I find interesting:
twmjr.com is the personal domain and writing site of my best friend, Tom. He doesn't update often, but when he does, it's worth reading.
patrickgage.com is the blog and personal domain of my friend Patrick, whom I met at CMU and who is basically the male version of me. Except, of course, better.