About Me: Milo Coulter
My Story
A photo of me exploring an abandoned mine in desolate Eastern California
I was born on a warm, sunny spring day in late May of 1998 in Santa Monica at St. John's Hospital to a painter mother who owns, manages, and teaches at an art school, plus a father who is a 7th grade history teacher and also plays guitar. From an early age I was enthralled with music and art due to this mixture of creativity. When I was young, it was quite difficult for me to relate to the kids my age. They would listen to the modern pop music of the day while I was obsessed with the Beatles, Rolling Stones, and many other artists from that period. The modern stuff had no substance to me. To this day, I still listen to these bands a great deal but have expanded my repertoire. In the last 3 years, I've been collecting original press vinyl especially from bands famous (or not) in the 1960s and 70s. As you can probably tell, a huge portion of my life involves music.
This goes from attending concerts to leading me to learn how to play guitar. I learned partially from my dad but also from listening to music I loved purely by ear. From the age of 8 on, I was in rock bands on and off and writing music. Me performing in local bands made it into such a love to partake. Through it I met many different people who had a similar passion.
I prepare for a gig with my old band, Sunset Crater, in 2019
At the same time, I developed quite the knack for travel and road trips starting with sitting in the back seat of my father's car on long vacations. I developed a love for nature especially being in the majestic mountains or desert. Camping, hiking and fishing became a big part of my life as I started spending a whole lot of time in the Eastern Sierra Nevada and the Mojave Desert. This last summer, I drove all the way up to Washington with my girlfriend and was able to see the Cascade Range up close. We were able to camp along the way up and got to explores places like the mighty Coastal Redwoods.
One of my favorite places in the entire world, the Mojave desert
Me taking in a Dead and Company show at the Hollywood Bowl in 2019
Traveling and music coincided as I became very into The Grateful Dead, an older band who has a following with a separate offshoot called Dead and Company. The band is known to have a following that goes religiously around the country. Their music has resonated to me and my life greatly. Unfortunately I've never had the funds to accomplish touring the country with them, but I attempt to especially once COVID-19 goes away.
Another thing I'm overly enthusiastic about is baseball whether it's playing or watching it. From a young age, I played in little league, then continued on to high school. I suffered an injury that forced me out of the game, however I still closely follow the Los Angeles Dodgers. It is a passion of mine to attend baseball games at Dodger Stadium with friends or family. It is something I miss mightily especially the warm summer nights with the heavenly smell of dodger dogs in the air.
The typical view from our seats at Dodger Stadium
The Process
From a design standpoint, this blog was chosen in the format for a multitude of reasons in which I felt needed to be acceptable. The different aspects I included were instances of visual organization, modular design, dominant element and photos, color being used sparingly and incorporating typeface. In terms of visual organization, I know firsthand that people tend to read and look left to right in order to comprehend it. It's what every native English speaker and reader is accustomed to and born with. I made it so the photographs could help the flow of what I wrote purposefully left to right incorporating the four basic elements of page design. The four elements include photos, cutlines (or captions), headlines, and general text. These components were absolutely vital in my article article very bringing me to my next topic of discussion regarding the modular design of my blog. I made the modular design as simple as possible, using specifically only rectangular photographs. If I were to use any other shape of photograph, the images would be weird and too distracting from the article. Using rectangles also makes it easier to adjust the size and crop the image. Dominant element comes into play as all of the photographs I use were purposefully arranged in a certain manner to coincide with one another. All the photos relate to the writing around it in some way or another. It creates emphasis especially the first photo of myself in the mine. This is an example of a dominant photo in a sense that it's the main point of importance for the article in general without the writing having specifically to do with what's going on in the photograph. Other types of photos i used were horizontal and vertical photos to provide emphasis on the certain topics I was covering in my blog. Cutlines/Captions add that specific context that may be needed that the story doesn't necessarily need to provide. The color I used wasn't a prominence whatsoever. I made a point of only using the colors of the photographs i included for the article so any other colors that there wasn't any room for distraction from any other potential colors. Typeface also comes into play here. I specifically chose the font, Avenir Light, because it's simple and looks very professional especially when creating a web blog. I used it both for the headlines and the text and it reflects the simplistic, yet appealing nature of what you'd want in a blog. For the main headline of "About Me: Milo Coulter" I used a separate title typeface called "DIN Neuzelt Grotesk" which gives it a tall, title-like appearance. I used this typeface for this very reason as it also looked clean and professional, which is what I wanted for my article as a whole. I made the type a size that was legible to the reader but wasn't over the top. The cutline/caption also uses the "avenir light" but obviously smaller so the reader wouldn't confuse it with the text.