About SE

     Shattered Elegance began as a Zine; a Zine is an online, email magazine that used to be a thing back in the baby internet days (yes, I can still hear the throwback connecting noise and the "You've Got Mail". I am that old.) and it's been around since 2002.

     I began SE as a young, 14 year old boy and it originally was "Sapphire Graphics", which later became the zine "Poison". A website was to follow and it was named "Shattered Elegance". It offered online graphic competitions called "Blend Challenges" and tutorials, along with showcasing my digital art and generally helping in any way I could in the new world of digital art. It blew up and went what would now be called "viral".

     It maintained over 1,000,000 unique hits daily. I competed directly with the top 10 websites; I was one of them. Amazon was one, as was Google and so were many others. It was a slobberknocker for numbers and I never monetized any content; it was always updated, cutting edge and free. It was just fun for me and it showed. I cared.

Stupidly, at 19 years old, I let my original .com URL slip for nearly 5 minutes without renewing it and the unethical and unfortunately not yet illegal cybersquatters at buydomains.com, immediately bought the domain from under me as I was finalizing my repurchase. They've held my .com for ransom ever since and I yet have to take them to court for bad faith and sue them for the name back.

Years later, in 2018, I decided to pick the pieces back up and buy Shatteredelegance.net instead and keep going; I'd been using my company's name of Shattered Elegance all along, so I finally made the jump back again into the digital space and SE has been online ever since. This time around, I decided to sell my artwork and other things, adding a shop to SE and put the resources, help, tutorials and more into the blog section, still keeping the soul intact and helping people for free; I always loved that premise I had originally and showing community over competition was my original idea.

     SE is near and dear to my heart, art and soul. It's everything to me and having it this long has meant the world; it's become a part of me. I've always striven to truly make a change, one click at a time. I wanted to shatter the expectations. Shatter the elegant glass ceiling of what everyone thought possible. It's an honor to have you read the history and be a part of the future of SE. Here's to an elegant way to leave shattered everything they said we couldn't have.

     If you want to know more about me (Jarrod Vandenberg), the owner and creator, you can read it here.