This blog in 75 pixels
Following Anne’s suggestion, I signed up with BlogBurst, which is a new service that is trying to syndicate blog content to appear in newspapers’ websites. It’s still very much in beta, but I’m interested to see how it plays out.
They strongly encourage bloggers to add an image to appear with the blog listing, which is limited to a 75 x 75 pixel square. Since I’m not a particularly visual person, I’m soliciting ideas for what sort of image to use. I’d rather NOT go with a photo of myself. The only idea I’ve come up with so far is a photo of a cell phone and crayons. Any suggestions?
I don’t intend to change what I’m writing here in order to try to make it more appealing. I will stop posting poems that I don’t have copyright to, which I’ve done a few times.
March 1st, 2006 at 10:40 pm
How about something playing off of the world, in your title? Are any NASA photos in the public domain? Or do your kids draw pictures on the earth?
March 1st, 2006 at 11:05 pm
Not even a filtered picture? You write a lot about feminist issues, especially as it relates to work. Anything that could represent that?
March 1st, 2006 at 11:56 pm
I would go with a photoshopped image of yourself or some part of your face, like your eye.
I recently heard about and signed up for BlogBurst, too. What I want from them as well as what exactly they can offer is still unclear to me. I suppose I’m interested in more traffic and greater exposure but to what end? More traffic could mean more revenue from ads on my site. More exposure might lead to a paying writing/blogging gig.
If you have any more thoughts on this project, I’d be interested to know them.
March 2nd, 2006 at 4:52 am
I found this earth lightbulb using google images:
http://www.epa.gov/earth1r6/6pd/rcra_c/wastemin/wpe10.gif
possibly a little too subtle a pun, really. Good luck with Blogburst. So many of your pieces deserve syndication.
March 2nd, 2006 at 11:35 am
I use a heavily filtered image of myself in a yoga posture. Before that I used a coffee mug with an illustration of a pose layered onto it. Images that have some thought in them are more interesting than a straight photo. I like your cell phone and crayons idea.
March 2nd, 2006 at 2:47 pm
I can’t remember where I found this online, but there are some sites where you can make free avatars, so you could do a picture that has your general characteristics (hair color, eye color, etc.), but wouldn’t be an actual picture of you. I like the half-changed world idea, too.
March 3rd, 2006 at 7:11 am
I’ve been thinking about putting blogads on my blog and pimping it out with better graphics, too. Is it worth it for you?
March 5th, 2006 at 10:14 am
You could always just use an abstract design of some sort. No particular object. The body-part idea above works too: you could get fancier and use your eye (or any eye) with an earth reflection in it, for instance. You could spend days with a graphics program doing stuff like that…I know I have.
March 7th, 2006 at 3:55 am
This might be tricky to do because of copyright issues but it’s an older picture, could it be in the public domain?
There is a famous picture of a women in the dust bowl era. It’s a black and white of a mother in oklahoma (i think) in the ’30’s. She is sitting on a porch stoop with her face in her hand. There are some small children around her and she is looking out onto a now dessert plain, obviously trying to figure out what she is gonna do next. What if you could take that picture and put it in a modern context–like put her in a worn suit, with a laptop at her side and a cityscape in the back ground? I think you should go for something very emotionally powerful that conveys a heroic attempt to right wrongs in a “half-changed” but still in need of a great deal of help, world.–imp
April 8th, 2008 at 2:48 pm
Hi,
just visit my website:
http://www.bestfreeavatars.com
and you have a lot of free avatars to use.
enjoy them.
Jack