For the first time since 2018, and thanks to our new partner VistaPrint, we can include some dress shirts in our collection. These shirts feature an embroidered logo in relief, and the visual aspect of the logo exceeds all expectations! We can confidently ask our employees to wear them for any special occasion, and they will all look simply gorgeous! The grey version is designed for males, and the burgundy one for females.

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Thanks to WhatFontIs, I managed to find a similar font used in the original design. The particularity of WhatFontIs, in comparison to MyFonts, is its ability to search exclusively for free fonts. At the end of the day, this online service saved me both valuable time and money!

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On the top is the newly made logo. You can see the improvement in clarity, especially on the contours. Since it's our brand, we care about our reputation. We can't accept compressed pictures being used as logos on our official merch. Customers won't care if we have to remake old designs from scratch, especially if these tees are priced the same as the latest collection, while the cheaper/older ones won't be available for sale again.

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I finally decided to recreate the version 4 logo to work with HD pictures. The logo is an important part of our merch, so it cannot be neglected by being improperly upscaled or restored from a non-HD version. This is also an opportunity to improve the designs. The main idea remains the same, but working on physical objects requires owning the process. When I receive the tees, I always have ideas for improvements, but I can't spend all my time making design updates for them. So being forced to redo everything is a great opportunity to improve old designs.

This one in particular, with hindsight, was especially unappealing because I compacted the text too much and used fonts that were too small in order to emphasize the picture. That was a mistake, and we only noticed the inability to properly read the text afterward. These things make our products look unprofessional, and despite designing merch not being our main activity, it's important to provide premium rewards to supporters and care about the quality of our merch when we can.

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We're trying to resurrect these old tees as best as we can, so you can still purchase them. It's a very tricky task. The logo's text is upscaled, and upscaling tools are never brilliant when it comes to text. The 'v7.4' mention indicates the most recent update.

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Since I lost my original logo, I reverted the colors using Paint and changed the pink line to any desired color by using onelinetools.com. This solution has the advantage of being completely free and requiring no software installation.

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Between design refreshes, I came up with 'Covered in Eggs,' which plays with www.housestationlive.com's colors and logo. I also came up with a brand new merch type: a pendant necklace. The boat is where the 3D Electro festival is organized, and the product is called 'Destination Music' because the podcast is called 'Address Unknown.' So it's a clue about the course set.

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From 2018 to 2023, I was using Tunetoo to design and sell branded tees. In 5 years, things have changed. Tunetoo is not as great anymore. In 2023, we moved to VistaPrint, which is a much more reliable partner and offers a lot of customization possibilities.

Unfortunately, 18 of my 20 branded products were designed with Tunetoo, which means I have to recreate the whole collection if I don't want the store page to be completely empty. This is going to cause me a ton of unnecessary work. Plus, I lost some of the original designs because they are simply old.

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Quick comparison: number of articles on screen when opening the website:

- jeanmarcmorandini.com: 4
- nextgen-auto.com: 5
- housestationlive.com: 18 + 2 buttons

This is the achievement of 10 years of constant thinking and evolution. Happy Birthday, House Station Live .com!

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From v1 to v5, www.housestationlive.com was entirely focused on music. v5 was close to perfection. Then, I expanded the website to include more topics, which felt like starting over from scratch. v6 was a disaster—its design choices were poorly suited for the project. Now, with the current v7, we've achieved the best of both worlds: a sleek interface promoting social posts and discussions on a variety of topics. This shift was driven by the need for complete independence, including from social networks.

It's a natural evolution of the concept. Rather than scattering my thoughts across multiple platforms like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube, everything is now centralized on the website. Another key consideration: our visibility on social media was abysmally low, while our website, even when underutilized, generated substantial traffic. We tried everything to grow our social presence, but the reality is harsh—algorithms don't favor small profiles.

We invested years, and we paid for visibility. What did we get? Our community constantly distracted by suggested content from rivals in the sidebar of our social pages, sabotaging our efforts. Each time we built a small circle of followers, the platforms recommended everything but our content. It felt like working for the benefit of others. Meanwhile, our website, with over 10 years of presence on the Internet, has solid search engine rankings.

This is the inevitable consequence of social media's abuse of power and algorithmic discrimination. Now, our website offers more than just music. Visitors discovering our newly expanded content section are potential future customers. No rival content will be suggested, no ads will be shown—everything serves our purposes. We are 100% independent.

Moreover, we're now focusing on ad-free platforms like Mastodon and Odysee. Alternatives exist, always. You just need to open your eyes and stop being just another WordPress, YouTube, or Twitter member.

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welcome to "expended content section" version of www.housestationlive.com