Halftime Hennessy has a new look. Don’t you just love it!

Last February, Halftime Hennessy re-launched into its newest and best form yet. When we re-organized the site, our strategy was to find a group of contributors who not only had interesting and original opinions to share, but were excited about having a place to share them. After building a staff (which is still growing) we kept the any guidelines to a minimum – write what you want, when you want, but make sure you have an original take on what you’re writing about. As for everything else, the attitude seemed to be: “We’ll do it live!” This included the site’s layout and design.

Well, now that we have our sea legs, we decided that maybe Halftime Hennessy needed a little cosmetic upgrade. Are you thinking what I’m thinking…? MAKEOVER!

As you can see, we’ve gone with what we are calling a hardwood theme. It gives the site that “pop” that it’s been lacking. We threw around plenty of different ideas and took shots from a few of different angles, but in the end, there was something about the hardwood design that stuck. It took a little while, but then we figured out why we like the hardwood so much.

In case you didn’t know, this site’s name comes this story, courtesy of Ron Artest, a/k/a Metta World Peace. In short, he used to drink Hennessy during halftime of NBA games.

Hennessy is this really classy, top of the line, French cognac. It’s supposed to be enjoyed by sophisticated individuals in refined establishments on special occasions. Ron Artest is not a sophisticated individual. A sweaty men’s locker room is not a refined establishment. And halftime at an NBA game is not a special occasion. Thus, the name Halftime Hennessy evokes this feeling that is simultaneously classy and trashy.

The hardwood theme not only evokes the floor of a basketball court (tying into the sports aspect of the site), but also that of wood paneling. Wood paneling has those same classy and trashy qualities. Some people tend to think that wood paneling instantly makes something look nicer – like it’s an automatic improvement on your van or basement. But more of than not, that’s the opposite of what wood paneling does. It’s cheesy. It’s Uncle Rico – it thinks it’s classy, but it’s really the opposite.

So by using the hardwood theme we can acknowledge both aspects of the name Halftime Hennessy.

The hardwood also helps to solve our identity crisis a little. There’s been a struggle to figure out if Halftime Hennessy is a site with more editorial-like content or something less formal. After several months, we’ve realized is that we’re a little of both. And the hardwood embraces that fact. Halftime Hennessy has been described as this”little site with a lot to say,” except we’ve dressed ourselves up to look like we’re bigger and more important than that. Consider the hardwood design to be our winking eye.

Moving on to the logo. In designing it, we tried to distill the site into as simple of a concept as possible. Essentially, most of what we write about are sports and pop culture; so that’s what we went with. The logo has two H’s and two icons – one on top, and one on bottom.

The top icon is a trophy which is meant to signify “sports.” It fits with the hardwood theme well, too. Can’t you just picture some poorly lit shelf, full of plastic participation trophies in someone’s wood-paneled basement?

The bottom icon was harder to choose. Finding something to encapsulate all of “pop culture” in one image was difficult. Right now the icon is a hand that is writing… mainly because the content we provide is written word. The hardwood also ties in well here, too – think of a wooden desk.

 Well, now that we’re all on the same page, why not have a look around the site and read some of those great articles you missed? Let’s see, there are plenty of excellent film reviews by Max, our interview series Gettin’ To Know… from Eric, some mixtapes from Joe, Breaking Bad Power Rankings from Kyle, and Mad Men recaps from Liz. More recently, there’s the “epic rant” on The Ballad of Honey Boo Boo from Thonederdome, an examination of soccer and America from Michael C., and a look into pickle back shots from Michael B. Jeanne talked about Tebow and Lara talked about Weezy. There’s also a staff conversation on the recently-ended London Summer Olympics.

There’s something for everyone! So, go take a look for something to read while taking in our new look.

[NOTE: It quickly become clear that listing all the content from the HH Staff was not only tedious, but probably not helpful either. We have lots of contributors not mentioned here who also wrote great articles, so go find them.]

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