Well, I redesigned my website.
I was always a little unhappy with the last version. It had weird issues both in the front and back end. It was too sparse, boring, and not at all who and what I am these days as a designer, developer, and person.
Or something like that.
So I went back to the drawing board—well, Figma—and built a design system. I call it “Kestrel” after one of my favorite birds. It’s a small bird of prey that punches above its weight sometimes, and I can kind of identify with it in a few ways. I have been working with systems and patterns for a long time, and I decided that it was a good time to start and build my own for my own uses, products, and ideas. I am always learning and trying new things. My curiosity and ambitions are always running. Look at my notebooks. I foresee this system starting to grow and explore more of my skills and push what I know.
The overall look of the site was inspired by Colter Wall’s album “Memories and Empties” and my ever-expanding love of the outdoors and adventures. I wanted to showcase that while showing my skills in development and design. It’s fun to just sit down and create something. I wanted to really make something that looks and feels “me” more than something that I made in a weekend and thought looked cool. This was a test of where my personal aesthetic is at and what I can do with it. I really like how it came out, and I am really excited to see where it will go in the future.
The back end is actually largely unchanged despite the issues I had, but I have a plan for those in v2 of this site. The original idea of my site with that last version was something that would grow and be broken and weird. This is still part of that, but I want this to be a more thoughtful process. Some features I add will be weird but at least thought out. Everything is still on 11ty (or whatever it is called now) and hosted on Netlify.
A part of me building this site was using AI/LLMs and how it can help my workflow. I have a lot of thoughts about this and many complicated feelings about AI and generative AI but I will save that for a later post.
Part 2 Coming Soon.