DDC Web Site
Credits

I know, I know, I know. This new site took a SHITWHACK of time to launch. I’ve been crying about this thing for a decade. But you have to understand—every couple years someone would come along and would freak me out pretty good. “Draplin, we studied your numbers, and you need to be careful when you launch. When this thing works on phones and iPads, you are going to notice a big uptick across the boards!” This kind of warning haunted me. We’d make a plan, dig in, load up a bunch of stuff, get busy with client work or DDC road show gigs, and things would be put on hold. And then when I’d dig in months later, there’d be a couple new records, 14 logos and whatever else to update. Just understand, this beast was built IN BETWEEN everythingelseness. It was only when I clamped down on it in the summer of 2024 and did three dedicated months in the summer did we finally see a pinpoint of light at the end of the tunnel.

Here’s the deal with this website: From the get-go, I made the call to show AS MUCH AS I COULD from client work, to simply honor those who trusted me with so many projects. The merch side of things? Shooting, refining, organizing and uploading those 380-ish product pages, connections and updates? That took a couple WHOLE summers. But I did it, with the help of Gonzo, Leigh, Mark and Evan. And I’m relieved to have it all up here, and now start adding shit to it, like I did my old draplin.com site.

 

DDC Web Site
Personnel

Brian “Gonzo” Gonzales
Lead Developer

Solver Collective, Gresham, Ore.

I met Brian during the early days of Coal Headwear and Union Binding Company. He built out some of our earliest brands into crafted, usable web sites. I trust him with my digital life, and appreciate his technical prowess, creativity, diligence and patience with me. Plus, he’s just a solid human. Such an good dad, brother and son. It’s been an honor working on this with him and I’m thankful forever.

 

Leigh McKolay
DDC Merch Mistress

Leigh McKolay Design, Portland, Ore.

Behind every raving, degenerate 666-lb backyard graphic designer is a lovely, patient, on-top-of-shit lady who can size up exactly what needs to happen on the site, calculate and deliver? That’s what’s going on here. She doesn’t take any shit digitally and knows how to wade through my muck and figure out what needs to be figured out and keep moving. And she ships the shit out QUICK. Try us.

 

Mark Welsh
Photographer

Mark Welsh Photography, Portland, Ore. and Hawaii

Mark shot all the DDC Action Caps up to 2022, as well as a big mess of product. Just knocked it out of the park in a swipe of masteful efficiency. Anything past his incredible photoshoot reset has been Frankensteined in Photoshop. Thanks so much, man.

 

Evan Rose
Proofreading and Gen’l Eagle Eyeing

Mountain Rose Inn, Burlington, Verm.

Evan’s always been a reliable sounding board for projects. His eye will catch things that no eye is even thinking about. (Do eyes think?) I’ve run things past him for 25 years and kind of rely on those eagle eye tune-ups from this animal.

 

Cameron Barrett
Early Days DDC Web Developer

Presser, Montclair, New Jer.

Cameron is a buddy going all the way back to my time at NMC in Traverse City. He pushed me over the digital edge in the late ’90s with my first blog, right into the first proper build of a DDC web site in 2004. Even though we were on opposite ends of the country, he was just an email away from a quick tweak, averting crisis or answering any one of my nerdy questions.

 

Hey! Watch it! Settle down, truckers! I was busy running the Draplin Design Company! This new site has NEVER been about getting new work. When this build started, I committed to showing as many things as possible, simply for posterity and documenting all the cool stuff I’ve been lucky to work on. It had to be this way. And frankly, that took a long time.

I worked on the site feverishly the last four summers. And buddies keep asking, “But Duuuude, four summers?” It’s not like it was the only thing on my plate. It was one of many. When I’d get a window, I’d feverishly dig in.

2021

Summer of the initial build with Gonzo. Mapping out the sections and learning the Squarespace content system. But mainly, it was updating and prepping things to get them up to speed with everything else.

2022

Summer of Merch. Uploaded and reshot a cool 300-ish products.

2023

Summer of client Work, and the other half of shooting and uploading new Merch.

2024

Bringing it all together, polishing, tuning and tweaking, right up to the imminent launch.

What Took So
Goddamned Long

 

DDC Web Site
Typography

The site uses Helvetica Bold for the display typeface and Helvetica for the body copy. And this decision goes all the way back to 1997 and the first site we built with Cameron. There were seven or eight typefaces to pick from. Helvetica Bold made the most sense, with it’s perpetual modern, crisp bold forms. It worked in 1961, in 2000 and sure as hell works in 2024.

Helvetica Bold

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
0123456789 !@#$%^&*()_+

Helvetica

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
0123456789 !@#$%^&*()_+

 

Digital Dread, and Other
Looming Consternations

Big Promises with No Follow-Up
One of the frustrating things along the way was the big promises made by colleagues. People love to lay into you about how shitty your site is, talk themselves up, and then the chase begins with emails from me trying to lock down a plan. And zilch. Big promises, and then no solutions offered up. Too many bullshit instances like this mired me down, and I’d put it all on hold for another year.

Proprietary Bullshit That Died Six Months Later
Proprietary bullshit…that quickly went the way of the dodo. Any number of times, a crew would hit me up and offer me a free ride in their new hot shit “Content Management System” that was going to take off like wildfire. I’d get back from tour or whatever and would hit them up, only to get a deflated, “Yeah, dude…that thing kinda went away.”

Vague Analytic Threats
Friends in the know would check under the hood from time to time and would warn me: We are getting a whiff of your numbers, and when the new site actually works on phones and iPads? You are going to notice a big, big uptick, so you gotta be careful.” One foot on the gas, always…but I had to keep one foot on the brake.

One Penny for Each Little Turd
That funny contrast behind the dingleberry who’s laying into you about how shitty your site is, and yet DOESN’T HAVE A GODDAMNED THING TO SHOW FOR on their own stupid site. If I had a penny for each one of these turds who came down on me, I’d have about $1.47, give or take.

 

In The Mixing Bowl
This Time Around

This website was built in Squarespace. This whole mess started with a couple free years from Harvey at Shopify. A couple years went by, my freebie pass lapsed, and I paid Shopify’s monthly zim zam for a couple years, with no development to show for. I was busy; what can I say? When I finally caved in and gave Gonzo a call, he was patient with me, listened intently and started calculating the best way forward, considering my skill set and so on. He made the call to go with Squarespace based on my limited skillset, and I trusted his recommendation. Gonzo quickly taught me how to use the stuff, and unleashed me!


01. Used Symbol Spy for cool quick-grab characters.
02. Used VEED.IO for converting old “.mov” movie files to “MPEG4” effortlessly. Thank you.
03. Used QuillBot for spell-checking copy. Our first foray into AI. Fuckin’ wow.

 

DDC Website History

Our first steps into the world of websites were solely due to my friend Cameron Barrett. In 1998 and 1999, I’d email the monthly newsletter “Draplindustries Gazette” out to friends around Minneapolis, back in Michigan, out west in Oregon and up north in Alaska. Just little updates of what I was up to, bands I saw and progress in school in Minneapolis. I remember Cameron clearly explaining the very basic principles of building a website and how it would make things tremendously easier to share the info I was sharing.

I remember Cam explaining the eight or nine fonts the web offered. And Helvetica Bold being one of them. I latched onto that and still use it to this day. It’s classic modern geometry felt good when it hit the world in 1961, when I cautiously launched my first website in 2004, all those years with the Moveable Type CMS site, right on into this new site. Still feels as fresh and unfuckwithable, just like it did on LEGO boxes when I was a kid.

 

DDC Gazette 1998

For a couple years in the late-’90s, I’d send out the “Draplindustries Gazette” which was a monthly newsletter detailing what I was up to. Allowed me to keep in touch with all my friends far and wide.

DDC Web Site 2000

Our first steps onto the world wide web was solely due to my friend Cameron Barrett. Instead of emailing the “Draplindustries Gazette,” I could post it month to month, with a full archive.

DDC Web Site 2003

You can see the influence of the mighty K10k on this version. Did my best to get each pixel dialed in to create these little windows and stuff. Those guys had such cool moves as the internet got going! Bleep bloop bork dork pffft!

DDC Web Site 2005

Our first proper blog! I designed it up and Cameron built it into Moveable Type. I could control every little piece of the thing. We quickly got tired of reading all that type on yellow!


DDC Web Site 2006–2024

Over the years, there’s been NO SHORTAGE of folks who want to be THE ONE to let me know just how much of a piece of shit my old site was. For the most part, everyone was well-meaning in their concern, but the couple mouthbreathers who wouldn’t let up? I’d just remind them: That site—with all its flaws—ACTUALLY WORKED all those years, drove a ton of merch sales and served as doable, workable bedrock for the DDC. I’m proud of the blog. I was daily for a good decade or so, which took one helluva digital commitment from day to day.

 

Fun stuff like this, when I had a weird zit sitch and had to go in and get the bastard drained. A rough, rough day behind me, but still had a little something to say about it on the site.