About Bohemian Design

Why the name Bohemian Design?

This is a question I get all the time, why the name Bohemian Design? Back when I was attending the University of Minnesota I read an article about bohemian web designers. This article used the term to refer to freelance designers, and questioned if they could ever compete with the big corporate design firms. I don’t remember the conclusion they came up with anymore, but the seed for the name was planted. It seemed to go along with my ideal business model. That model being my friends and I working together, but separate to come up with the next big innovative thing. No bosses, no corporate dress code, no boring 9 to 5 schedule. And the name wasn’t registered yet, a definite plus.

This was back in the dot-com heyday. Millions were being made on the net, designed and coded in basements and apartments all over the world. My classmates and I had these same aspirations. How we were going to make our mark, and fortunes in this new frontier. I launched my first Bohemian Design site in June of 2000. For a while the collective collaborative model flourished. But shortly after the dot-com bubble burst, competition increased and everyone moved onto to other [more stable] ventures.

Along comes the market crash of 2008, and once again the collective freelance idea was reborn. The spirit of the entrepreneur is once again look upon as the key driving force out of the recession. Companies are looking for a high return on their investments (ROI), necessitating a cost effective marketing approach. Many talented artist and developers are available once again. Also companies are realizing that the cheap labor out of India is not all it’s cracked up to be. It’s time to be bohemians again.

About this site’s design

The two font Bohemian Design logo with the upper case Freehand591 BT and lowercase Zurich Cn BT fonts has been with me from the start. I’ve been tempted to change it, but have not yet. The only change so far was to change the stripe from blue to red.

This current layout for the Bohemian Design web page adds a new element: “The Bohemian” painted by William-Adolphe Bouguereau in 1890. You can see the original image of the painting to the right. This painting used to be owned by the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. Unfortunately they sold it in 2004 for $735,500 (including Christie's commission), before I ever got a chance to see her. I believe she's now owned by Rockefeller Plaza. If anyone knows where she is now I'd like to know.

The Bohemian depicts a barefooted young woman sitting on a concrete bench on the south bank of the Seine. She is across from Notre Dame de Paris and is resting a violin in her lap. There has been many painting of “bohemians” over the years, but I especially like this one.

This site is built upon the Drupal content management system (CMS) and based on the Zen theme. It uses a modified three column layout. The left column extends to the top of the page, pushing the header and menu blocks to the right and allowing the bohemian girl to over look the page.

The Drupal CMS has allowed me to develop a project management system for Bohemian Design’s artist and clients. This has been a proof-of-concept approach to a web site being more then a marketing or direct sales tool. It has opened avenues of development, making the website a customer service tool. This can be incorporated into a company’s standard site, or as an Intranet site available only to employees and clients.