The Big Dog Dart League was my second client, and I created the site and also managed schedules and rosters. But my favorite part of this site was the Big Dog logo that I created, a cigar smoking strongman bulldog. It was the first time I thought I might have some actual design chops. Even 20 years later, I still see that logo on vending machines around Pittsburgh and it makes me happy every time.
In 2000, a few friends of mine formed a girl-pop band named Trilogy in the mold of Destiny’s Child and recorded a demo, and I built them a website for free because I was 20 and they were girls. The band was short-lived, I don’t think it made it through the summer but I did date one of the girls for a couple months. Though it was the first time I used Photoshop to make a logo, so there’s that!
National Sports Challenge was my first paid client job. I was 19 years old and I was paid about $250 to build it. NSC was a Madden 2000 tournament, E-sports way ahead of its time. Not only did I build the website, but I helped the guy running it to set up 64 40-inch CRT TVs and Playstations in a hotel conference room. Despite widespread radio ads, turout was much lower than expected. But to just have someone pay me to build a website was exciting.
In 1997, me and a friend launched the WWF Action Zone, a website dedicated to covering the WWF pro wrestling and it became an instant success. Within a year we relaunched the site as Top-Rope.com and continued to run the site for 4 years through college allowing us to travel around the country for wrestling shows. It was an amazing learning experience that set the stage for a long and rewarding career.