History of Smithankyou.com Blog Header.

Part of my job requires me to blog hop for a few reasons.

1. To look for potential new talent. (Bloggers of course.)
2. To compile reports to client after they blog about us.

Importance of language, content and tone are no doubt some of the key factors of having a good blog but these aside, a good layout is very important. I am not computer or HTML genius thus I've never really had any fanciful layout so a lot of my design works actually comes in a form of just a header.

A good header picture or other graphics around your blog shows a lot about your blog. It is pretty much like what you wear to work everyday. Seeing something ugly when I first land on your blog can really really turn me off. (But than again, if your blog has music, no banner is going to save your life.)

Throughout the years of blogging, I've changed my header and tagline several times. (Also read : How to be a blogger on why is tagline important.) Thanks to the advance technology of external harddisk back up as well as online storage, I manage to collect back most if not all of my blog header since I started designing it.

You will be surprise some of the designs are actually done using simply Paint.exe.

Early Years

When blogging was purely a diary to me. Days where I am not earning anything from the blog and no such things as invites. The days when my daily readership is probably no more than 5.

All you rockers should recongize this. I was such an amateur to not know what was intellectual property rights. I simply rip this image off Aero Smith's logo and edited it to my blog header. It was horrible.

This was the header I used when my whole blog layout was a parody of my favorite board game cafe "Pitstop". Good old days! I started off as a customer, to working there as a staff and finally very close friends. I really miss reading that blog as it was always full of fun and laughter.

I really liked this header back than and if I'm not wrong, this header actually sticked for the longest. It's either because I was really into super man or I wasn't really blogging actively and the ROI of time changing it didn't make much sense. And I really like the tagline as back than I was always talking about scandal and it was the "in" word for me than.


This was when I got my silly bangs and I thought it was pretty cute and the tagline was kinda inline with the images and also how I normally talks online. It really didn't stick. This was actually created using Photoscape if I remember correctly.

Going "Pro"

Started using this when I was wearing the than fashionable hipster black frame glasses. It was kinda an icon on me and my good friend from Malaysia - April Yim suggested that I should use this as my "blogger name card" and to created a proper "branding" and image since I was starting to attend events and what not. I than decided to use this as my blog title. It's all about getting into people's head.

This was probably the first header I created myself using Photoshop. I was really into basketball all over again and this was before NBA got it's tagline changed to the current "BIG". It was "Where Amazing Happens" and I decided to parody it.

I got my very 1st Lakers customised jersey and I really wanted to show it off. I didn't have a tagline for this. It's not difficult to guess. This didn't stick on the blog that long either.

Awesome Photoshoot.

 This has to be one of my favorite blog header. It was clean, neat and professionally taken. It was a picture taken by the awesome Cake man during International Suit up day 2011. This blog tagline was obviously a parody of "I'm sexy and I know it." With this blog title, I was nominated during #OMYSBA2012 . It was read out loud during the event "Mr.Smith - I'm awesome and I know it." That was when it hit me that I should use a more irritating headline for him to read it out. #Troll.

Although I did say that the 2011 blog header was my favorite, all good things comes to an end when International Suit up day 2012 came along. A better looking photo despite the ugly hair after my hair for hope experience. The font and style was GQ inspired thou.

Finding the New Identity.

Age was catching up and I thought putting my own face on the blog is a little too much for me earlier this year. I took down the one with my awesome looking face and decide to go a little more mature. I always like Chinese ink stamp as well as calligraphy and thus I went with this. But for some reason I felt it wasn't shouting me at all and I took this down after 2 weeks or so.

This is actually an awesome act piece by jerrellconner. This piece shows the ranks of the Lakers greatest players of all time in a format of the famous "Last supper". I wouldn't say it shouts out loud about me or the blog but I guess this is a awesome piece. It shows my support to the LAkernation. I think this piece will really be awesome to be converted into a tattoo sleeve.

Inspired by Steve Lawler. This is one piece about me. Things that shouts me, things that I like. How many of you can really name everything on this picture or what each picture means or where it came from?

I would like to share one more which I did years ago using paint. It's not a blog header but it's a forum signature. One that I really like.

Inspired by Ashton Kutcher's "A lot like Love". This was done actually when i was in Army.

So here's my history of my blog banners which brings back a lot of memories in graphic form.

What about you? Do you have a good archive of your blog banners or layout?

Mr.Smith, a picture tells a thousand words. What's your story?