A Site for Sore Eyes

(I’m pretty sure I’ve used that title before)

I spent much of the last two weeks working on a new personal site. I was feeling like my web presence was being stretched a little thin, and I wanted to unify all my projects under one roof.

I also wanted to build something from scratch that I had more ownership and control over. I wanted this to be my design, not just a template where I get to choose the colours. And I’m tired of spending far more than I should on too many web services that were all overlapping in functionality.

Design
I didn’t really have a clear idea of how I wanted the site to look, but I was leaning towards something more typographic than anything else. The idea I settled on was “a printed book inspired by Dieter Rams”. I spent a little while looking around for a nice serif typeface, but eventually fell back on my favourite to use in college, the FF Meta family. To make it a little easier on the eyes, I avoided using any black or white, and instead created a range of greys. 

Innards
It was nice to have the opportunity to write some html and css from scratch, something I haven’t done in far too long. (I’ve been using Panic’s Nova and I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but those folks make some nice software). Also, I love flexbox in CSS. It makes layout a website delightful. Thumbs up to everyone responsible for that.

The trickiest part of all this was integrating the blog, which is hosted by Ghost. Or at least it would have been if I wasn’t saved by Robb Knight who did the complicated part. You should check out Robb’s site which was very much a source of inspiration for mine.