From coding up to cutting down: My shift back to minimalism

So for the past few months, I think since around August, I’ve been working on this site’s design. I found a tool to help me tweak things in the backend without it showing up publicly, so you haven’t seen the progress. That’s almost too bad.

Even though the process has been slow, I’ve had a lot of fun learning about code. Sometimes, it’s totally aggravating. Other times, it’s totally exciting. I can understand how people could get into this full-time.

But as of today, officially, I’m going backward. Until last week, I’d been building the site up from what you currently see. I was adding features, colors, and lines. I like yellow and orange, so it had a lot of that. Plus, some black. It was actually looking pretty modern with the video on the home page and javascript moving things around.

But last week, I had to check in with the old version of this blog, the mostly white one, to pull over some old content. When I did, I remembered why I liked that old theme: the simplicity. So when I came back here, I cut a few things out, just to make things simpler, mostly social media buttons.

I did it again the next day.

I ended up doing that for a couple days straight, actually. Cutting, cutting, cutting. Now, I’m getting back down to the bare bones of the site again. And as of today, I’m cutting out my beloved yellow and orange altogether.

In a week or so, I should roll out the new version. But for you, it probably won’t be a big deal, for a couple reasons:

1. It’s going to be super minimal. (I’ll write more about this later.)
2. Because of all the white, it’s going to feel fairly similar to the design you’ve been staring at for the past couple months. (I was working on the new design, so I haven’t been seeing the current, white design this whole time.)
3. You just don’t care as much as I do about how this site looks. (That’s not an accusation. It’s just how things go.)

So yeah, I guess this is kind of a warning about what’s coming up. It’s a turning point for me. More than just design, I’m starting to think differently about needs and what they mean in general. (Again, more on this later.)

For now, design is simply the first place the shift is going to show.