I made a tough decision today. I removed the links to Killing Machines, Obey Fojar and Hatelife from the Space Ninja Design examples page.
Why did I do this? Well, to put it briefly, I’ve gotten two remarks lately that some people, when viewing a list of links, and see a link to something called KILLING machines, or HATElife, or a site about propaganda art, make some assumptions about my character. Now, admittedly, these are ignorant assumptions, and it reflects poorly on the people who make them more than myself, but the fact remains that some people do make them.
I would prefer to avoid potential clients thinking I’m associated with the Nazis or, in the charming words of the asshole Head of the Graphic Design department at CWU, that I’m involved in some sort of sadistic religion.
Yes, it’s frustrating to voluntarily censor the presentation of my work, but I am NOT removing these sites from the web, just the links on my professional design site. In fact, if they dig deep enough through the links on the site, they’ll still find them all, but it will avoid the problem I encountered with the CWU guy, of passing judgment without even looking at the pages to see if they are, indeed, what he assumed them to be.
Ugh. I feel dirty for having to do this, but I guess that’s the way it goes. I can take solace in the fact that hatelife and KMorg aren’t the shining pinnacles of design that I hope to express through my web design front, and Obey Fojar isn’t really web design at all, just a gallery of artwork that I happen to be proud of.