Regroup 2023
I honestly thought I blogged last year but apparently one of most tumultuous years of my life didn't have any room for blogging. Once again I find myself on the path to try and remedy the situation. Starting with a fresh coat of paint on the website!
I wouldn't call the new visual style a redesign but more of a refresh. Building upon the surprisingly successful Eleventy architecture I decided to just pick new colours, tweaks the typography a little bit and keep it short. I've removed some unnecessary complexity and kept most of the pages untouched albeit some font sizing here and there. I've upgraded the Eleventy built to the latest 2.0 beta release and with that did some much needed clean up in the backend. There is some aspects of Eleventy like the documentation and debugging that I wish were more user friendly but I don't see myself changing platforms any time soon.
So more of a refresh and cleanup thing than a redesign, however. There is a redesign aspect to the philosophy of the website. Taking into account everything that has been going on with Twitter I've decided to uninstall the app (honestly wasn't using it that much) and go for a homebrew solution.
I've brought back the latest blog posts on the homepage and added a section I'm calling "notes". Notes is for the short form, low stakes, Twitter-esque write-ups that I'm going to try and do more in the future. Sometimes a blog post is a bit overkill and this new addition is hopefully going to let me express my thoughts in a new format. Alongside the old blog feed I've added a notes feed for those interested in a RSS style solution.
Then, the Podcast. I've been listening to podcasts for 17 years but I've never recorded one myself. It hasn't been for the lack of want but for the lack of a good topic. Nowadays there's an overabundance of shows to choose from if you manage to find one you actual want to listen to. For a couple years I've toyed around with the idea of a solo podcast about the topics I'm interested in. It's not a new idea and I've completely stealing it from someone I saw on Twitter once and forgot. I'm thinking 10 minute episodes about creative work, game design and development, art and whatever else. Just like the blog. The section on the website is there to remind myself and to keep myself accountable. So, coming soon™!
Last new addition I want to mention is the monogram I designed for myself.
It's an ellipse with a lowercase letter m inside that creates this wavy line somewhat reminiscent of a bird's wing ending in a dot and a triangular shape making up the eye and a beak. I'm really happy how it turned out. It's currently taken a post as the favicon for the website and it should be found above the footer on every page. I'm probably going to do more with it down the line but I didn't want to overwork the poor bird.
TL;DR 2023
- Website design refresh
- Monogram with a bird on it
- Podcast coming later this year
- Going to try and release a game finally