Big Design, Bold Ideas
Big Design, Bold Ideas ź“ė Ø
Iāve only gone and done it again! I redesigned my website. This is the eleventh major version. I dare say itās my best attempt yet. There are similarities to what came before and plenty of fresh CSS paint to modernise the style.
You can visit my time machine to see the ten previous designs that have graced my homepage. Almost two decades of work. What a journey!
Why change?
Iāve been comfortable and coasting for years. This year feels different. Iāve made a career building for the open web. That is now under attack. Both my career, and the web. A rising sea of slop is drowning out all common sense. Iām seeing peers struggle to find work, others succumb to the chatbot psychosis. There is no good reason for such drastic change. Yet change is being forced by the AI industrial complex on its relentless path of destruction.
Iām not shy about my stance on AI. No thanks! My new homepage doubles down. I wonāt be forced to use AI but I canāt ignore it. Canāt ignore the harm.
Also I just felt like a new look was due.
Design process
Last time I mocked up a concept in Adobe XD. Adobe in now unfashionable and Figma, although swank, has that Silicon Valley stench. Penpot is where the cool kids paint pretty pictures of websites. Iām somewhat of an artist myself so I gave Penpot a go.
My current brand began in 2016 and evolved in 2018. I loved the old design but the rigid layout didnāt afford much room to play with content.
I spent a day pushing pixels and was quite chuffed with the results. I designed my bandit game in Penpot too (below). That gave me the confidence to move into real code.
Iām continuing with Atkinson Hyperlegible Next for body copy. I now license Ahkio for headings. I used Komika Title before but the all-caps was unwieldy. Iām too lazy to dig through backups to find my logotype source. If you know what font āDavidā is please tell me!
I worked with Axia Create on brand strategy. On that front, weāll have more exciting news to share later in the year! For now what I realised is that my audience here is technical. The days of small business owners seeking me are long gone. That market is served by Squarespace or Wix. Itās senior tech leads who are entrusted to find and recruit me, and peers within the industry who recommend me. This understanding gave me focus.
Bandit game
To illustrate why AI is lame I made an interactive mini-game! The slot machine metaphor should be self-explanatory. I figured a bit of comedy would drive home my AI policy. In the current economy if you donāt have a sparkle emoji is it even a website?
The game is built with HTML canvas, web components, and synchronised events I over-complicated to ensure a unique set of prizes. The secret to high performance motion blur is to cheat with pre-rendered PNGs. In hindsight I could have cheated more with a video.
I commissioned Declan Chidlow to create a bespoke icon set.
Declan delivered! The icons look so much better than the random assortment of placeholders I found. Iām glad I got a proper job done. I have neither the time nor skill for icons.
Other stuff
Declan read my mind because I received a 88Ć31 web badge bonus gift. I had mocked up a few badges myself in Penpot. Scroll down to see them in the footer. Declanās badge is first and my attempts follow. I havenāt quite nailed the pixel look yet.
My new menu is built using <dialog> with invoker commands[1] and view transitions[2] for a JavaScript-free experience. Modern web standards are so cool when the work together! I do have a tiny JS event listener to polyfill old browsers.
The pixellated footer gradient is done with a WebGL shader. I had big plans but after several hours and too many Stack Overflow tabs, I moved on to more important things. This may turn into something later but I doubt Iāll progress trying to learn WebGL.
Past features like my Wasm static search and speech synthesis remain on the relevant blog pages. I suspect Iāll be finding random one-off features I forgot to restyle.
Sources on 'Invoker Commands'
European alternatives
My homepage ends with another strong message.
The internet is dominated by US-based big tech. Before backing powers across the Atlantic, consider UK and EU alternatives. The web begins at home.
I remain open to working with clients and collaborators worldwide. I use some ābig techā but Iām making an effort to push for European alternatives. US-based tech does not automatically mean ābadā but the absolute worst is certainly thriving there! Yeah Iām English, far from the smartest kind of European, but I try my best.
Whatās next?
Iāve been fortunate to find work despite the AI threat. Iām optimistic and I refuse to back down from calling out slop for what it is! I strongly believe others still care about a job well done. I very much doubt the touted ā10x productivityā is resulting in 10x profits. The way I see it, Iām cheaper, better, and more ethical than subsidised slop.
Let me know on the socials if you love or hate my new design
Note
P.S. I published this Sunday because Heisenbugs only appear in production.
