My website has always been a testing ground of new ideas, a place for me to experiment and learn new things, so it’s only natural I do a major redesign every other year or so. However this design marks a shift in how I talk about myself and my work.
My previous website design, and all of those that came before it, had a more specific goal. I needed to market myself and put my best foot forward to get a job out of college. It was about showing fancy features and clever solutions and elegant design in the style I like to do for a living. It was about simplifying who I am and what I do into something easily understood and marketable.
A new direction §
I’ve recently realized that my personal site doesn’t need a lot of bells and whistles. I’ve also never been good at (or enjoyed) talking about what I do or trying to market that. My hope is that if I’m ever being considered for a new job, they will hire me based on who I am, what I have to say, and the work I’ve done and continue to do.
In light of this shift, I’ve made the decision to reevaluate the design and layout of my website. Looking at a utilitarian, almost brutalist aesthetic, back to the roots of what a website is at its core before designers like myself transform it into something else...
I want this to be the last redesign for a long time. Something low maintenance I don’t have to worry about. There’s plenty of work for me at my full time job and plenty more ideas for personal projects.
This shift in intention will help me funnel those design ideas and inspiration into more interesting work including design for good projects that could have a larger impact than my little personal website.
Technical goodies §
Other than the design itself, this edition of my website is also built with new technology (yay!), using 11ty and nunjucks instead of Gridsome and Vue. I really liked Gridsome but wanted something more bare bones. Plus 11ty is blazing fast.
The new colors have higher contrast for accessibility, the site has more robust tagging and url structure, RSS feeds, and there are plenty of opportunities to add things like site search and archives (if I can ever get into a rhythm of writing) down the line.
The last major change for the website is that I’m going closed source. It was a hard decision for me to make because I always took pride in having that out there, but I think it’s time to reign it in. I’ll post tutorials about anything interesting I do for the site so maybe people can learn along with me. If you’re interested in the design of the site itself, it’s largely based on my custom CSS boilerplate.
Looking to the future §
Let me know what you think about the design and the direction I'm going. Its a bold step for me and my humble site, but I think it will free up some space to write, learn, experiment, and build new things.
Thanks for reading my little rant!