My new gravatar

More and more applications invite you to add a pic in your profile, a gravatar. In some applications and specially in social media the size and position of these gravatars are becoming prominent, too much for my taste. I am not a fan of pictures, I have never been. I do not like selfies, I have no Instagram, I try to avoid publishing pics of myself on Facebook… .

I use two different gravatars in internet. One for professional profiles and applications, associated to my corporate account ( agustin.benito@codethink.co.uk nowadays ), which was taken about 4 years ago, and one I took over 10 years ago associated to my personal account. I have hair on that one.

A few months back I started to think about my approach to this gravatars, looking for something simpler that could last, reflect my personality and that could be used for both, personal and professional profiles… and substitute the pic I have in my site.

My first idea was to ask a couple of photographers I know to take a good picture of me. One of those super modern, super cool, super fancy I-enjoy-life-you-should-ping-me-and-I-will-teach-you-how-but-only-if-you-are-cool-enough-to-deserve-my-coolness kind of picture. I was not fully convinced on this approach though. It would only work if the pic is really cool and checking LinkedIn, I had little confidence my pic could be at the level of some of my connections. Yep, I am connected to very cool people.

Then, looking at some gravatars from hackers I know who have zero interest in publishing a pic of themselves, I thought that maybe an illustration could work. Something simple, not a portrait. An illustration that looked like me but is not me, that could work in small and medium size formats… .

Exactly, I did not know what I want. It was more like… I do know a few things I do not want.

With this “crystal clear” idea, I contacted Ramón Miranda.

Ramón is a professional illustrator that has contributed to several Open Source projects, like Krita. He lives only a few kilometres away from my place in Málaga, Spain which is… great.

I explained him in a mail my idea. We have a video chat to polish the concept and a few days later he invited me over his place to show me a draft. A few days later my new representation of myself was done… with Open Source tools (Krita). And yes, I have the source file.

Thank you Ramón for accepting the challenge and for your dedication. I like the result… a lot.

Dear reader, do you? Yep, I will erase you comment if you don´t.

If you ever need a professional illustrator consider pinging Ramón. He is a hell of a professional. Ah, and he provides online training sessions for those wanting to learn or improve how to draw/paint in the analog and in the digital world (with Open Source tools).

Time to substitute my pics with this new gravatar.