My first step into Web design was really very primitive and laughable. I was in the Honors version of 2010 English at Utah State University. The 1010 class was your basic writing composition class, and 2010 was the next step up. Both were required as general classes, but I had obtained the equivalent credits in high school. But for the Honors program, I had to take the 2010 English class.

The instructor added a Web dimension to the regular writing assignments by having us design webpages for our essays and other pieces. This was back in the day when the default background color in Web browsers was medium gray. The first page I did had a medium gray background and was done I believe in FrontPage (does that exist anymore?). It was pretty sad by today’s standards. The others I did for that class weren’t much nicer.

My wife took the same class three years later, and her websites were much better done than mine.

It was that class, however, that started me dreaming about having my own website. I thought up a gryphon-themed site, which ideas are the loose origins of Gryphon Mountain. I even wrote up some copy. I think it was the aspiration of anyone with any vanity to have a website at that point.

I’m glad I didn’t jump on my ideas back then. It was only ten years ago, but the days of the default gray background were also the days of violent magenta backgrounds with green text. I would have been joining the rush of non–Web designers and put together something less than noteworthy—or, worse, noteworthy only for its lack of taste and professionalism.

My second try was better. In one of the entry-level technical writing courses, we had to create an electronic portfolio (which we would later improve on or redo in our capstone class). I had to learn Dreamweaver 4 at the same time I put my site together. I was more pleased with the outcome that time.

Even though I was terrible at Web design when I first started getting my hands around design tools and HTML, the most important thing was that I liked it. When I got into the technical writing program, I did more Web design, and it was one of the number of aspects of tech comm I realized that I enjoyed. Tech comm has given me a reason to improve in CSS and HTML. Now, I work in these areas on a regular basis, and then here’s Gryphon Mountain.

Makes me wonder how a plain, medium-gray background would look on this site… Nah, forget it.

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