2024
2023
This was written on September 27, 2024. On that date, this site was bare bones and some might say quite ugly
Step 1: know your audience and what they want to know.
If you don't know who you're designing for you might as well stop designing.
I designed this site for my peers and anyone that was interested in finding out more about me.
The risk of shipping a bare bones aesthetic might turn some peers off, but that takes me to purpose.
Step 2: know what you want your audience to know.
I want them to know how I think about things and understand the bredth of my interests.
What do I want my audience to do? Reach out and start a conversation.
Step 3: Ship something incomplete, by design.
Perfect is the enemy of good. The minimum thing that speaks to your audience for its intended purpose is all you need to start.
If audience, purpose, and legability are objectively met, the rest is subjective anyway.
Step 4: Know your values.
Design with those values in mind. For this site, I value speed, simplicity, and accessibility.
A static site, with black text on a white background is the fastest, simplest, and most accessible site I could make.
Step 5: Know your motivation. Not all design decisions are impact anyone but you.
I want to communicate on my own terms on my own platform.
I wanted to design a communication workflow that works for me.
I wanted to to use ubiquitous tools and tech. No new sexiness.
I wanted to be able to automate and accelerate, and nextjs and mdx make that easy.
I want a fun creative outlet.
Step 6: Build and maintain your backlog. Iterate. You're never done. Ruthlessly prioritize what you need to, or what you're able to do next. Make sure that everything in the backlog is aligned to your audience, purpose, values, and motivation.