New Website 2020
Finally, after 3 years with 250 hours of work, I finished my longest-running project: A complete new design and code for my website. Everything is new. I created over 1,400 files with 29,000 lines of code.
There are multiple reasons it took me so long: I created not only a completely new design, with light and dark theme, screen size dependent grid and typography, I also developed it with a completely new technology stack, including the static-site generator Gatsby, TypeScript, Styled Components, MDX, GraphQL, and CSS Grid Layout.
I always take the opportunity to learn new things while working on personal projects. This time I intentionally picked TypeScript, even I knew it would slow me down. I wanted to learn it beyond basic training and theory which is only possible while doing it.
I had worked with CSS Grid Layout before but never with this level of complexity. I also wrote Unit Tests for every component and screen to get faster with React Testing Library and Jest.
The inspiration and design phase took a long time. I had to read a lot of books, study styles, designs, and art to select the direction I was aiming for.
Journal
For my Journal, previously called articles, a blog I write since 2006, I also re-checked the text of every article I wrote before and improved the quality of the images.
New Pages
I created some new pages for parts of my website that previously didn’t exist or where not displayed in a proper manner.
Projects & Showcases
For the first time, the website has a Projects section showing my work with further showcases for some of the work.
Haiku
My Haiku (short Japanese poems) collection was previously lovelessly dumped on a single page without proper context. After the relaunch, I dedicated a whole section to the Haiku, including English translations.
Sketchnotes
I also had a collection of my Sketchnotes hosted on a subdomain on Tumblr and wanted to move it back to my website and created an own Sketchnotes section.
The Traditional Color of Japan
A few years back I created a small project creating an ASE file out of Traditional Colors of Japanese mentioned in a book with the same title. This project also got an own page showing all colors and the books these are from.
The whole project stretched for three years, because I didn’t work continuously on the website, and sometimes didn’t do something for multiple months.
Making-Of Series
But finally, the website is completed and I deserve a long summer break without screen time. But I plan to release a series of Making-Of articles I already wrote over the next weeks. It will include a look into my thoughts and inspiration process, the design and development of the website.
Stay Updated
If you want to be updated you can follow my RSS/Atom Feed.
I set up a Now page, based on the idea of Derek Silvers who created a movement when he started his page. The Now page shows what I’m doing right now and will be updated irregularly.
Feedback Welcome
You can always send me a message or feedback, all possibilities to contact or connect me can be found on my About page. I don’t track anything anymore so I’m flying completely blind about visitors to my website. Some blissful ignorance from my side to all this data-driven, growth-driven, customer-satisfaction-driven development.
Source Code & Styleguide
If you’re interested in the code you don’t have to wait until I release the article, the source code is publicly available on GitHub. All my components can be viewed on my Styleguide created with Storybook.