Mama's Got a Brand New Look

I love when smart friends convince me to make life easier on myself. Last week I enjoyed dinner out with the lovely Christina, Roxanna, and Tania. We talked about many, many things (in fact, closing down the restaurant well after all of our bedtimes), including -- not surprisingly -- blogging. At which point I brought up the name of this blog, which I’ve been fretting about intermittently since publicly asking whether I ought to change the name back in June.

In a nutshell, my main concern was that in my mind, the name Pop Discourse wasn't the right fit for what I now blog about (versus what I intended on blogging about when I first started the site; namely, the intersection of pop culture with myriad other topics). And now that I've gone from sporadic to regular blogging (thanks in part to the weekly pregnancy photo-journal project that is part of my life list), I've realized just how much I love this little personal blog -- free of all the officialness of Boston Mamas (much as I love that site). Only problem? The increased regularity of blogging here also served as a constant reminder of how much I disliked the literally-threw-it-together-in-10-minutes former look of Pop Discourse.

And also, I got a notice that my domain hosting was about to expire. It was time to get off my rump and make a decision about whether or not to change the name.

Tania, Roxanna, and Christina all (very genuinely it seemed -- they were, however, drinking) encouraged me not to change the name. Tania said she didn't even think of the formal name, she simply thought of it as "Christine's blog." Christina and Roxanna pointed out that they hinge more on the "discourse" part of the name and that "pop" can mean a lot of things.

So I ran with this validation. I decided to renew my hosting, embrace my name, and redesign the look so that every time I post, I love looking at this blog as much as I love writing at it.

And so here we are.

Using my favorite unexpected headshot ever (courtesy of the delightful Gabrielle Blair), I decided to get up close and personal with Photoshop and pop art myself for a new logo. How totally rad is this?! It's so rad that I kind of want to pop art everyone I know. (Hmmm... I wonder how that would go over for Christmas presents.)

I hope you love the new look as much as I do. I'd love to hear your thoughts either way! And one thing's for certain: now I'll probably spend an inordinate amount of time thinking of amusing thought bubbles. You might notice that the thought bubbles rotate on refresh, and I plan on continuing to change them. I credit Roxanna for that brilliant idea.