The Beginning of Avid Web Co — How We Got Here

Friday, 10 February 2017

This post is from a retired blog, hosted here as an archive. The original post date and content has been retained.

Screenshot of the Avid Web Co website under construction

Avid Web Co logo

Welcome message: For those of you that are new to the blog, my name is Jon. I am the founder of Avid Web Co. I decided to create this blog to document anything and everything about AWC, technology, and my life. This post is going to be about the beginning of AWC, specifically. That being said, I do promise each and every one of you, that over the life of this blog – things will change. I know most people are scared of change, but sometimes change is good and it helps people get new perspectives on things that they possibly hadn’t thought of before.

One more disclosure before we start this entry. When it comes to grammar, I try my best, but sometimes my English writing abilities fall over. If I do make any mistakes, please be gracious in your criticism. I will do my best to proofread, but I want these entries to be casual – therefore I am going to write, here, as I would speak. Thank you for your patience.

The Beginning

YouTube and Graphic Design

I have always really enjoyed design. For a long time, I used my design skills to create custom images and designs in Photoshop and GIMP. Starting out, I used GIMP, because it was free. I started by making background images and designs based on inspiration that I received from various YouTube creators. After a short time, I decided I wanted to get into making my own videos, for YouTube. My original plan was to make a technology channel. On the channel, I would show people how to create some of these designs that I had made. With the design videos, I would include un-boxings of new technology. My first video was posted on February 24, 2011 (you can watch that here) – #cringe.

The tech unboxing plan went well until I started struggling to find the money to buy all the technology to unbox. That’s when I decided to roll over to the gaming scene. This went a lot better. It cost me almost nothing, and there was very little effort required. The only requirement was to play a game that I enjoyed. With this decision, I didn’t completely stop making tech videos, I just decided to spread them out to lower the investment.

After a good while, the gaming videos started to take off and I was getting better at recording and editing the videos. Unfortunately, I still wasn’t very happy with what I was doing. My goal was to entertain people, and I was, but I wasn’t making anything worth while, in the long run – gamer doesn’t really fit on a résumé. It was time to find a better outlet for my creativity.

Web Design

I slowly started dabbling in web design. I started to create basic webpages with very little information and some pretty designs. That still wasn’t good enough. My aspiration for perfection and my desire to make professional, beautiful, websites was not being met. I kept pushing, and finally I was getting somewhere. There was finally something, semi-good looking, that I was happy to show off. I started showing everyone what I had done, and this paid off. After pushing more and more, my sites kept getting better. My first big accomplishment was when I joined a small start up, as their web developer. I launched a small custom built website for the splash page and created a forum for the communication between users.

At this point, I had some experience and a credible project to show off. After some time, I had a restaurant owner reach out to me for help with a website for his business. After a few conversations, we agreed on a design and I completed the website for him. That site, since, has been discontinued, but you can view the design here.

Those two websites were just the beginning. They were the first stepping stones in my career. Without those projects, I probably wouldn’t be where I am today. Since then, I have had a lot of other projects and jobs, but like I said, I wanted to keep this short. I covered the most important parts. At some point, I will continue this thread, but in the mean time: feel free to ask any questions down below. I’m always happy to explain things in more depth!