Big Design, Bold Ideas

I’ve only gone and done it again! I redesigned my website. This is the eleventh major version. I dare say it’s my best attempt yet. There are similarities to what came before and plenty of fresh CSS paint to modernise the style.

Why change?

I’ve been comfortable and coasting for years. This year feels different. I’ve 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. I’m 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.

I’m not shy about my stance on AI. No thanks! My new homepage doubles down. I won’t be forced to use AI but I can’t ignore it. Can’t 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. I’m 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 didn’t 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 Pentpot too (below). That gave me the confidence to move into real code.

I’m 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. I’m too lazy to dig through backups to find my logotype source. If you know what font “David” is please tell me!

I worked with Axia Create on brand strategy. On that front, we’ll 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. It’s 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 don’t 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. I’m 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 88×31 web badge bonus gift. I had mocked up a few badges myself in Penpot. Scroll down to see them in the footer. Declan’s badge is first and my attempts follow. I haven’t quite nailed the pixel look yet.

My new menu is built using <dialog> with invoker commands and view transitions 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 I’ll progress trying to learn WebGL.

Past features like my Wasm static search and speech synthesis remain on the relevant blog pages. I suspect I’ll be finding random one-off features I forgot to restyle.

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 ‘big tech’ but I’m making an effort to push for European alternatives. US-based tech does not automatically mean “bad” but the absolute worst is certainly thriving there! Yeah I’m English, far from the smartest kind of European, but I try my best.

What’s next?

I’ve been fortunate to find work despite the AI threat. I’m 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 “10x productivity” is resulting in 10x profits. The way I see it, I’m cheaper, better, and more ethical than subsidised slop rates.

Let me know on the socials if you love or hate my new design :)

P.S. I published this Sunday because Heisenbugs only appear in production.

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