Vegetarian, Raw, and Vegan Web Badges


What if there was an effortless way to let people know that you were a vegetarian, vegan, or even raw vegan?

An idea practically hit me over the head on Sunday: what if people could share their nutritional choice in a supportive, yet unobtrusive and attractive way? I wondered why anyone hadn’t tackled this design challenge before. I’d never seen anything like the idea in my head before. Thus, the Powered by Plants badge was born.

Leafy Choices

The basic design for the graphic was already in my head, but it would take graphic design skills and patience to create something attractive and versatile. I decided to follow the design style I started when I created the CommentLuv badge for Andy over at ComLuv.com, which is really excellent plugin for WordPress and other blogging platforms that encourages blog discussion. The difficult part was deciding on what kind of leaf to use. I experimented with lots of different leaves (including some kind of 7-pointed leaf, but something didn’t quite fit), so I eventually settled on a broad leaf you see below.

Spread the Word about your Conscious Choice

Powered by Plants Vegetarian, Vegan, & Raw Vegan badges

Whether you’re a macrobiotic eater, fruitarian, vegetarian, raw vegan, or normal vegan, these badges are a snazzy way to spread the word about your conscious nutritional choice. If you use one of the badges, I would very much appreciate you spread the love and link back to the Spread the Word page so that others can get a Powered by Plants badge that matches their own nutritional choice. Spread the word that, by making conscious nutritional decisions, we become healthier creators.

And if you have any questions or suggestions, please don’t hesitate to let me know in the comments below.



New Widescreen Wallpaper – Charamandala 1


Today, this last day of 2008 AD, and before the year ends, I’d like to share with you something that’s been incubating since September.

Artistic Incubation

As I’ve often hinted at in the past, when creating something non-urgent I often start a project, complete more than half of it, and then forget about it for a few months. This kind of artistic incubation can be beneficial because when I return to the project, I return to it with fresh eyes, and see problems and possibilities that I didn’t see when I first created it. This process is also recommended for authors, that they should write an entire first draft without looking back and then let the first draft sit without looking at it for a few months.

Continual First Draft

Often, new authors will continually, some might say obsessively, revise the first chapter of their book only to never complete a first draft at all. This kind of resistance is something that all creators tackle. Once a first draft is complete, I tend to stow it away and forget about it for a while. It’s possible that this forgetting allows my unconscious mind to work on the problem in the background for months. However it works, I know that it does work.

After I’d created the logo for this website in July, I decided that, as a design element, it might work well as the central focus in a piece of visual art. So in September, I started experimenting. And today, I’m happy to present the fruits of my efforts.

What’s Not in a Name?

Charamandala 1 preview

See that white symbol in the top center of this page? That’s the Charamandala—the unique logo for Byteful Travel. The name is a conjugation of two words that are quite old. Chara means joy in Greek, and mandala is from the Sanskrit word mandalam, which means circle. (Note to the seeker, there is much to learn about mandalas. Recommended research.)

I’ve dubbed this wallpaper Charamandala 1, because I suspect this won’t be the last desktop wallpaper to feature the charamandala. Charamandala 1 comes in aglow and deep versions and is available in various widescreen sizes.

And feel free to let me know what you think.