Commemorative AbsolutePunk Logo Pin

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We’ve teamed up with our friends over at the Hard Rock Online Rock Shop to put together an exclusive and limited edition pin as a way of commemorating and kind of saying goodbye to the AbsolutePunk.net logo. There are only going to be 200 of these made and once they’re gone, they’re gone. So, if you’d like one, definitely grab it. I wrote more about the history of the logo and it’s creation after the jump.


I came up with this logo one day while doodling in class. I was just kind of goofing around in the margins of a notebook while sort of paying attention to the teacher and thinking about what I wanted to do on the website when I finally got home. This was a very common occurrence in school.1 I ended up drawing this funny looking heart and giving it a few little stitches. You know, because what’s a heart if it’s not broken when you’re eighteen and listening to pop-punk all day?

The original.

After I finished with it, I remember being really oddly surprised with how it turned out. It just looked like a little logo. It seemed like something I’d wear on a t-shirt or have as a pin on my backpack. When I got home that night I scanned the drawing into my computer and cleaned it up in Photoshop. This is when I decided, for whatever reason, that it absolutely needed to have blood splatter on it. I used an ink or blood splatter brush and went to town. The first version of it had so many red spatters. Over the years I would gradually try to tone that down a bit with each new iteration.

A little known fact is that on the old article page on AP.net there was a little image of the exact hand drawn logo that I had snapped with some really crappy camera at some point. I wish I still had that piece of paper, but that’s definitely lost to time.


The evolution.


It was maybe six months ago that I really started thinking hard about the idea of what it was that I was going to do with the next stage of my life. It’s when I decided that if I was going to keep writing online and running an online music website of some kind — that it really was time to turn the page on the name and banner I’d been under for so long. It was such a part of me and yet every time I viewed the site I almost felt like I was in a time machine; I felt like a different person had created it. It was so obviously me and yet so not me at the same time. I think these past three months I’ve been so focused and consumed with creating this new site and community that I never even stopped to bask in the nostalgia of the entire ride that AP.net was. I think that’s because to me it really doesn’t feel like AP.net is gone — it’s just feels changed in the same ways that I as a person have. It feels like taking that walk after the last day of class, when you wonder the halls and don’t really grasp that it’s probably the last time you’ll see those rooms again. But at the same time, after all the amazing conversations I’ve had with people in the forums over the past few days, it’s not a sad feeling at all. It’s more like a recognition and knowing wink while giving a hearty cheers in a bar full of friends. AP.net was special because of the people it was made up of — the staff, the members, and the relationships formed. It was a few weeks ago when I realized that while sitting on the forums talking in a chat thread. I was laughing at jokes people were making and cracking up at the gifs. And that’s when I instinctively moved the mouse up to the upper left to click the logo and go back to the homepage. My mouse hovered for a second, the brain realizing it was seeing something different from it was used to … where’s that little broken heart? Oh, that’s right, I’m here. And that’s when I knew we had something special brewing. It’s when I knew I made the right decision and was completely confident in the future.

I just want to thank everyone again for all the amazing and kind words that you’ve shared with me over the past few days. The outpouring of love and kindness has been incredible. I have been blown away by how many people have signed up for the forums already and are posting and talking about how much better they are — it’s rare that a “redesign” actually elicits mostly positive comments.2 A massive thank you to everyone that’s signed up to be a supporter, I know I’ve spoken personally with many of you, but I feel like I need to once again say thank you from the bottom of my heart.

These limited edition pins are going to be on sale for this month only, or until they’re all sold out, and there are only 200 available.

1. 
   Sorry mom.↩
   
   
2. 
   Pretty sure that’s more a testament to just how ancient AP.net looked at the end.↩
   

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