So much work for 500px

This past week and a half I spent redesigning the websites homepage. Most of the revamp has been finished and implemented. However, there are still a handful of loose ends to tie up. The major change was adding a picture of Sarah. She is after all a member of the team.



Secondly, we added direct links to some of our products. The idea here is to make the shopping experience simpler, easier, and more direct. Also, as products rotate through and seasons change we will be updating the links to continue making everyone's experience the best possible.



Thirdly, we removed the twitter feed from the AOS Culture portion of the homepage and replaced it with the product of the day. Don't worry all our twitter friends the feed is going to be relocated to the left hand navigation bar so you can see it on every page!



The changes leave us with the new and improved look!



We feel the changes are a big improvement, but we are anxious and excited to hear your thoughts!

Ashland vs Portland

It's been another long work week with lots of projects being completed and even more created. With the creation and brainstorming of new sites, marketing, and design projects for the store my brain was having a hard time shutting off last night for me to be able to fall asleep. This lead me to a great epiphany!

The acronym for the Ashland Outdoor Store that we so lovingly use is AOS. The reason why there isn't a Portland Outdoor Store is because the acronym would be POS. Nobody wants their store to be the POS store!

Mammut TX-1

Regular Price: $79.95 Item Of The Day Price: $67.95



The highest performance headlamp for absolute alpine use. The highly precise Total Reflex Optics with one HiFlux LED provides a beam that reaches 105 m light-range, and the lamp comes equipped with two Definition LEDs for 180 hours of Flood-light and Dual-light. Whether you're descending from ice-blown high camps in the early a.m., or enjoying an evening bike ride, the TX-1 is your headlamp of choice.

Read AOS's Review!

June Shirt Design

This is the original image. The photo was taken a handful of years ago by Verelle Stuck at Immigrant Lake outside Ashland.

First step is creating the Header image for the AOS website.

This is the initial concept for the shirt.

This is what the final design product (thank you Verelle) looks like before sending it off to Jess for printing.

Now were just all waiting for the shirts!

Subject Matter

Here it is the first of June. It's been over a month since my last post. In a lot of way's i'm forcing myself to write this post today. It is not for lack of desire. I really enjoy blogging and writing. Unfortunately, I really just haven't had anything to write about.

The main reason for this is because a while back I was criticized (not really anything new) for my writing. Surprisingly the criticism wasn't directed at my grammar or spelling like it usually is. The critic claimed that my passion for the outdoors, gear, job, and life that I have wasn't apparent and didn't come through in my writing anymore.

Despite what a lot of people think the opinions of others about me does matter and has an impact on me. I don't always agree with the opinions or criticism, but either way I still have to process it and it does affect me. So, this critics statements really hit me pretty deep because I do love the outdoors, gear, my job and my life. It has taken me a while to process through the statement and figure out how I want to use the information given to me.

One of the things that I realized through this is that not every post has to be positive or passionate about the outdoors. Also, posts do not have to be major each time. A post can be something simple and basic but the most important thing is frequency. I think that the criticism has really helped me redefine my ambitions for blogging and helped me streamline the process.

Therefore, the days of months between AOS blogs posts are over as well as the days of non-passionate-post!