Re-organizing my work and thoughts
Architecting a website to effectively express you as a human is hard. Like anybody, I have my own idiosyncrasies and such. So how do I lay all those out into a new web format that conveys who I am, what I’ve done, where I’m going, and all those other details that websites are good for?
I’m not sure I have a complete answer to these questions, but I did arrive at something that works for now. Here’s how I reached the place I did.
Themes are the new portfolio
As much as my work has changed over the last few decades, it’s hard to convey exactly what I do to folks. But as I dug into think about my life’s work to-date, I realized that there are some very clear themes that have emerged, both horizontal and vertical in nature. Perhaps more importantly, I know the ideas I want to spend more of my energy focusing on and communicating about over the years to come as I venture (trepidatiously!) into the territory of authorship.
As such, I’ve classified my work and effort into three categories of nine total themes—central themes, secondary themes, and tertiary themes. Now I feel like I have a way to organize my work and thoughts in the future without feeling like my new efforts diverge too wildly from what I’ve done in the past. These themes are a throughline, if you will, and I think they’ll help me a lot as I choose which projects to focus on in the future.
I wanted it to be fun, playful even
Just as importantly as how I organize my thoughts and work, I also wanted my latest site to be fun and reflect more of my personality. As much as the site is still quite simple and typography-heavy, the bright pink, use of 👍 emojis, and playful tone is truer to who I am than my last website was (just check out my 404 page if you want a taste). I think that’s good, and I look forward to seeing how people respond to it.
There’s no time like the present
Leading up to this launch, I only spent a couple days on the thing. As such, it’s very much in process and I have a lot of stuff I want to do with it, still. There are tons of shell pages just waiting to be filled, for example. But as with any type of effort to start something, I don’t want to wait too long, either. The sooner I launched, the more healthy pressure I feel to put the finishing touches on the thing.
Even this blog post is a very quick stab at communicating what I’m thinking. Hopefully I get better at posting more updates as I proceed forward. I know I would appreciate the opportunity to look back on my thought process down the road, so I’ll give it a whirl.
Love it? Like it? Hate it? Let me know.
Connect with me to let me know what you think about this sparkly, bubble gum pink gem of a website. I sincerely appreciate your feedback. 😊
