Since the beginning of time, este since the beginning of archondigital.com as a blog, I’ve always wanted to put up my portfolio on this site and write about the process of creating something. But anxiety, life, and procrastination would get in the way, and I would never get around to getting this done.
This was then at a time when I was still pretty much a graphic designer working for the Shangri-La Group (Makati Shangri-La, Manila) and when most of what I was doing were artworks for print. If you happened to dine at Makati Shangri-La’s Circles Event Cafe or red, or with any other restaurant from 2004 to 2008 and took anything from fancy packaging to toothpick wrappers, or whatever print collateral or tiny hotel product that you stole and took home (yes, we know), that was probably designed or executed by me and my mates as part of the hotel group’s in-house printshop team.
Back then, developing websites were more of a side hustle at night where I would be making small websites for a UK company that handled websites for athletes and local businesses in the Midlands.
Social Media and digital was still in its infancy when I left the Shangri-La Group. Life was good and I was exploring giving my passion for digital and tech a chance, or what I told my younger self then was my “plan B” from the inevitable demise of the print industry.
Forever lost
I know I must’ve said this a million times, working in print was my first love, having grown up in the house where my late grandfather, Stutz Fernandez(✝), ran a printing press during the mid to late 80s. So from the early years of my career and up to the point when I left for Dubai, I’ve built up quite the portfolio of artworks done in print and even hoarded a stockpile of overruns from almost everything I had anything to do with. Sadly that physical portfolio of print, all got turned to mush after the onslaught of Ondoy in 2009 while I was working abroad.
All that history was lost and I was left with very little to show off when it came to what was supposed to be an extensive body of work that spanned from 2001 to 2008 all because I failed to capture them then in digital form when I had the chance.
Enter jon-cuevas.com
So this is where my new website jon-cuevas.com comes into play. I have made it a priority to now document every thing I do on this site which since the pandemic, has mostly been web development work.
Keeping my portfolio as a separate site from archondigital.com will help me organize things better. Archon Digital remains as my digital playground where all these different interests of mine come together in one huge vomit of unorganized thoughts and ideas while the new website, Jon Cuevas will be focused as my web development portfolio.
BTW, if you’ve made it this far, congratulations, check out the back-to-top button on the lower right of this page. Click on it for a little surprise. Volume up. This is a sample one of the things I could not use on a site focusing on my professional work but is perfectly at home here on Archon Digital.