web design
Why Nerds Win
Are you a good fit for what I write? Here’s one way to know. I’ve been getting a lot questions about my new website theme. It’s still being built out, but how I decided on the theme should tell you everything you need to know about “growth
A Love Letter to the Link Post
I don’t know for sure, but I think my first blog started in 1996, two years after I built my first website. At that time, they weren’t even called blogs. You’d simply update the front page of your website every day with a few interesting links you
It’s Time to Get Personal
The personal website seems to making a comeback. Why? When social networks fail, we return to the hub: the place you own, the place where you control the experience. It's where you're indexed for life, if you're lucky. It's where you're background checked by employers, neighbors, new friends, and new
Speed Still Matters
At today’s An Event Apart Seattle 2018 [https://aneventapart.com/event/seattle-2018], Aaron Gustafson presented on why website performance is still so important. From attendee Jake Kronika [https://twitter.com/jkronika/status/981220371880906754]: > A 1s delay in page load can reduce conversions by 7%. Users are more concerned with
When the Right Tool for the Job is Wrong
Designing a website for my wife has me thinking about this essay from from a while back, It's OK Not to Use Tools [https://m.signalvnoise.com/it-s-ok-not-to-use-tools-f39fbb9b6995] by Jonas Downey, a designer from Basecamp. Jonas abandoned his fancy tools when he created a website for an animal shelter using
If you have a personal website, why do you have it?
> That question leads to more specific questions… What am I trying to get out of this? What’s unique about my story? Do I have anything to say? Why would someone look at this? Why do I want them to look at it? What do those visitors really need to
The Best Sites Are Often Designed With A Paper And
> “The best sites are often designed with a paper and pencil. If your arm gets tired, you’ve probably overdone it.” — Seth Godin
A Very Visual Web
There’s a lot of great points in this article, but this is the idea I’m taking away from it: > “The visual web has another thing going for it: You don’t need a translation. A smile is a smile is a smile in Chinese, Hindi, Brazilian, Portuguese, Spanish
I'm a HTMinimaList Nut
I’ve been struggling lately with redesign issues for one of my sites. I find myself coming back to my favorite kind of web design; a little-known school of web design popular for about a few months more than a decade ago: HTMinimaLism. The idea is: instead of covering up
Websites are Billboards
Most people spend just seconds looking at a billboard. Most people spend just second looking at a website. Wouldn’t it be great if more websites were designed like billboards? Easy is never easy enough.