Leftium

"The Element of Creativity!" Inspired by Adobe's CS3 icons , I designed my logo to resemble a cell from the periodic table of elements. The Leftium logo features an over-sized "Le" that pops out and forms a leftward arrow. lef·ti·um n. Symbol Le The element of creativity! John-Kim Murphy's online identity/username. Yes, in a moment of sheer brilliance I combined the word "left" with "-ium", a suffix commonly used to form the names of chemical elements (think " Titanium ", " Einsteinium ", or " Adamantium ".) The result is a personal online ID that I am very proud of because "Leftium" is: Short—only seven letters long. Yet the domain leftium.com was still available (obviously!) Relatively easy to convey over the phone. Most people know how to spell "left" and can guess the rest from the sound. Much easier to explain than "wonsungi", anyways! Unique. Before I star...

A few of the monkeys I started drawing and collecting to go with my username. I initiated my quest for a personal online ID over sixteen years ago. While teaching myself computer programming, I discovered the demoscene . Mesmerizing pieces of audio-visual digital art, demos were often signed by their authors with "handles", or pseudonyms. As an aspiring programmer, I desired a cool handle like "Abyss" or "Psi". My real name, "John", was too common. In fact, once there were four John’s in my grade school class of twenty-four students. Even "John Murphy" was fairly common. There were at least six other students named John Murphy enrolled at my university. Later, while employed at both Lockheed Martin and Microsoft, I got numerous e-mails and some phone calls that were intended for some other John Murphy. Also at airport security I was inevitably always delayed due to some naughty John Murphy from Ireland.