I don’t even remember when this redesign started. The Sketch file (shh; shhhhhhh) says I started it all the way back in January of 2024, well over a year and one non-collapsed government ago. I did find some paper sketches older than that, so who knows. But for the better part of a last year, I’d been picking at the new design here and there, and just idk like happily lazing away amid colors and textures and type and weird layout ideas. Figured I’d get it out the door when it was, y’know, time to get it out the door.
Well, I suddenly find myself with a lot of time on my hands, so it seems to be time to get it out the door.
How’s that old saying go? “When the world’s on fire and the fascists are at your door, stop waffling and just finish your redesign.”
Pretty sure it’s something like that. More or less.
As it happens I quietly pushed the redesign live last Friday, and then hopped offline for a few days with old friends.1 Since getting back online I’ve spent the last few days fixing bugs, finding new bugs, and rethinking some old design ideas. The site’s not finished, mind you — when will it ever be? — but it feels like something I can build upon.
And this isn’t something I typically say, but I find myself happy with so many bits of the new design: I’m excited to have a little blogroll again; I like the bloop-y effect when I’m scrolling down the journal on wider screens; I didn’t think I’d be able to build any of the more angular pieces of this design, and I’m glad (proud?) I figured them out.
Anyway. World’s on fire, but I have a clean(er) slate in front of me, and a whole bunch of ideas I’m excited to try. Might as well get to work.
A couple colophon-y things, which I’ll lodge here until I have an actual colophon:
- Untitled Sans and Tiempos Text, my old Klim Type favorites, are back. The display type is YouWorkForThem’s Vermont, which I adore for its fussy little terminals as much as its name.2
- The flower artwork began its life as a photograph from Avinash Bhat on Flickr, and I’m grateful they made it available under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license.
Footnotes
This has been “Parker.” a post from Ethan’s journal.