Doodle Beat: The 500th Post

Doodlesplatter, the custom blog designed to serve as an online “artkive” of Jon Burgerman’s work celebrates its 500th post with Doodle Beat.

Jon Burgerman probably requires no introduction to most of you but, for those yet to discover this artist, it’s pretty safe to say he is one of the world’s most prolific doodlers! His professional doodling skills are highly acclaimed and can be seen bringing colourful cheer to the globe at niche exhibitions, renowned galleries, on all manner of merchandise and in a vast array of designer art toys and one-off customs.

Doodlesplatter serves as an online “artkive” of Burgerman’s work and is possibly the biggest “artkive” of a toy artist’s individual work. Doodlesplatter is the brainchild of journalist and toy maven, Jeremy Brautman, and The Neon Hive is mighty proud to have collaborated with him last summer (it seems like only weeks ago) to relaunch Doodlesplatter. You can read all about what we did and why we did it here or, in a smaller nutshell, we produced web design and development for a custom WordPress blog! But why another blog? And why a custom blog design?

Not just any blog, Burgerman’s incessant art making and ability to demonstrate that any surface can be a canvas requires Jeremy to efficiently “artkive” high volumes of the artist’s work – often on a daily basis! WordPress was the most effective option in terms of functionality but the blog design needed to be as fun, engaging and colourful as Burgerman’s work and completely dedicated to the user-centric experience. The only way to achieve this was by creating a completely custom blog design that could be fully scaleable as the “artkive” continues to grow and oh, boy it’s growing! Doodlesplatter just hit 500 posts!!! Here’s to 500 more…

Doodle Beat: The 500th Post

Part of the web design process threw out another of Jeremy’s crazy ideas… creating our own interpretation of Tiger Beat magazine, aptly titled, Doodle Beat.

Whilst Jeremy had a blast hanging out with Burgerman during his American Summer and interviewing him, I had the fun of designing a “vintage” Doodle Beat article. The entire project was awesome to work on – largely thanks to getting to stare at Burgerman’s work for days on end and working alongside someone as funny and inspirational as Jeremy – but creating Doodle Beat really was a personal highlight in the design process.

I have purposely cropped the article in the Doodle Beat graphic above as it’s best viewed in its rightful home over on Doodlesplatter, you can read the full Doodle Beat interview here!

Join the posse. The posse is legion.

For those of you blog cynics out there, or for those looking for inspiration or a fresh new blog to see in the new year, please head over to Doodlesplatter.

I am often asked which blogs I subscribe to or read regularly and, without bias, Doodlesplatter is waaay up there. I read every single post and recommend you do so too! Jon Burgerman is an eternal source of inspiration to any designer, art toy lover or budding young artists whilst Jeremy’s copywriting is incredibly witty, informative and refreshingly well written; a master craftsman, a quicksilver wordsmith.

Doodlesplatter, the soul food of blogs. Subscribe.