Designing this site: prologue

I don’t blog much. Which is weird, because I have plenty of things I’d love to just get down “on paper”, so to speak. But I’m a designer. I love beautiful things. This blog in its current form doesn’t fall into that category. That makes it less enticing to deal with.

Fact is, client work comes first during work time. And family comes first during personal time (and work creeps in all too often). So when to blog? When to play around with stuff I can’t play around with (yet) in client work?

In one of our recent conversations on the highs and woes :) of web work, ppk suggested that I kill two birds with one stone: design my blog and write about the process. So I can actually do my own blog design (the current one is a third-party WP theme) and write on the blog at the same time, instead of waiting until the design is “finished”, which all of you designers out there know is never the case.

It made me think about what Mark Boulton and Leisa Reichelt did for Drupal, and what Andy did with New Internationalist. Not necessarily the part about inviting feedback (which was a key factor in Mark’s process), but the part about publishing the process. Being open about this process will allow me to “think out loud”. And I’m sure some of my talented friends will give helpful and critical feedback along the way.

So my thoughts at this point are basically:

  • Create the design I want, which should at least hint at the fact that I am an experienced designer.
  • Switch from WordPress to Drupal. While I like WordPress, I love Drupal and know much more about using it.
  • Use HTML5. Like it or not, HTML5 is coming, and now’s the time to start playing with it. Some problems with HTML5 are obvious, but others will only see light in practice.
  • Although I’m not a fan of the mainly decorative parts of CSS3 which browsers have been quick to implement, there are some parts of CSS3 I’d already like to take advantage of.

That’s a start. I’ll be posting my thoughts, sketches and experiences here, documenting what I can for myself and whoever might be interested.

We’ll see where it goes.