Creator

8r14n.com was created by Brian Charlonis. Learn more about Brian on Charlonis.com

Origin

I created 8r14n a long time ago, I think it was 1997. I was working for a marketing agency in Westport, CT with a group of bright, intelligent and creative people who had alter identities the likes of ‘CRT’ and ‘Epsilon 7.’

One day, for some wild project we were working on outside of the agency, we decided that I needed a name that followed suit in their ranks. So I changed a few letters of my name into numbers (B=8, i=1, A=4) until BRIAN became 8R14N. If you squint your eyes it still kinda looks like ‘Brian’.

Brand

As a brand, 8r14n has inherit qualities I would describe simply as ‘a brand not for everyone’. 8r14n goes against almost every mutable law of branding. It’s difficult to remember, never mind spell, and there’s almost nothing for anyone to associate with it. Sometimes I call it the anti-brand.

8r14n has mostly become a brand targeting myself. At one point I gave the brand a tagline, ‘Not Something Just Anyone Can Remember.’ It’s kinda crazy for a marketing guy to have a personal brand that’s hard to read and challenging for most to remember. I like it. It’s rebellious. Punk’s not dead.

To cover my @ss a little, I created Charlonis.com. Charlonis.com has my resume and segregate my personal and professional lives. I don’t think I have anything to hide, but if I did it would probably be here on 8r14n.com.

Logo

In 1998 I was living and working in NYC above Vincent’s on Hester Street in Little Italy. I kept the 8r14n name going and developed a logo so I could use it on 8r14n.com.

I chose a logo font that resembled an odometer. I liked the fragmented look it created – which seemed on-brand. The font is a free logo type font I found online called, AI Fragment. I like how the lowercase letters of this font only has color in the negative space between the letters. The letters are the priority but in this case it make the negative space the focus. The uppercase letters are the opposite.

I noticed some interesting stickers inside the subway cars in NYC. Near some doors, not every single one, I noticed a black star on a clear sticker. I used to wonder if it was put there by the NY Transit Authority or by some interesting NYC subculture.

I’m pretty sure it was part of the train and served some purpose I didn’t recognize. I enjoyed the daydreams about what it could be, and it was part of the inspiration to use a primitive shape for the 8r14n logo.

Instead of a black star I chose a black square to start with. I wanted a simple shape and a black square was a primitive movieclip I was using in all of my Shockwave Flash ActionScript – so I used that. I eventually dropped the square but admit I bring this version back occasionally.

In the spirit of the anti-brand, the colors have always been black and white. The logo design tries to embellish the anti-brand qualities visually without being impossible to read.

8r14n.com

Back in the day as a web developer / actionscript guy, I wanted to create a creative space to learn and experiment. Today I don’t usually wear the programmer or developer hat except on the side, for fun or maybe to help a friend. Sometimes for a side job.

8r14n.com has always been an experimental place for me to explore, try and break things. Usually the final code (or experiment) is for somewhere else on the web. This is a place where I write code from scratch, tinker with open source solutions and paid solutions. Many of my personal projects have been born here:

• Resume web site – Charlonis.com
• Web developer resume and portfolio (retired)
• Cell phone photo gallery – mobile upload, server resize and watermark, thumbnail generation and publish
• Facebook gifting application, “I Certify That” (retired)
• Android application, developer.android.com tutorials

8r14n.com today is very much alive and still all about breaking rules. As an experimental playground, it’s not uncommon for things in the site to break. What you see today is always in motion, growing and changing. It’s about making and breaking things with a smile.