Headstand Media

I registered my first domain in 1996… BIRKEY.COM, figuring I should have the domain of my own last name. Within the next year, I taught myself to code in HTML using an Adobe product called PageMill, and set up a web and email hosting account at TheRamp.net, a Chicago area ISP. This was back in the days of 56K modems, dial-up accounts, and Netscape version 1.0!

I used this website initially for promoting my own freelance illustration and design business, as well as my brother’s beekeeping website at Beesource.com.

You can see from this early web design that I used a repeating image in the background. I arranged all my links along the left hand side in a table. All my body copy went in the right hand column.

I got fancy with animated .GIF images nestled in the body copy. Notice the link in the upper left hand column to the Association for Multimedia Communications. I was on the board of that group at the time working with Harvey Tillis, Barry Koehler, Lou Morelli, Paul Marvine, Michael Mizen, Tim Schwaar, and many more.

At the bottom of the webpage is a reference to the fact that I had just changed my hosting from TheRamp, to Morelli Systems. My friend Lou Morelli had offered to host the site for me on the Morelli Windows servers and data center. It was through working with Lou that I eventually met my good friend Mark Goeke, who is now a few blocks away at Encyclopaedia Britannica in downtown Chicago.

Also included on this page was contact information to my artist rep, Connie Koralik.

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