A WIP I'll never finish writing - Orignal Title: i learnt design. (kinda?)
Prelude to the predule
This was originally going to be a whole article about how I redesigned my website off the back of taking Jack McDade's Radical Design Course (which is really great btw!), but I never actually finished writing it. I decided I would like to publish what I did write anyway, so below you will find what I did write - in it's incompleted glory!
You'll have noticed this site's design is not "Radical" by any means. That's because I undid my Radical Design and made it boring again (sorry Jack McDade) because I still wasn't happy with the site. Here are some screenshots of what it did look like however!
From here on out you'll be reading the original article!
Well... I learnt how to poorly rip off Jack McDade at least. So should you: https://radicaldesigncourse.com
Prelude
So, last iteration of this site I dropped this banger of a post (i really need to learn design) which lamented the fact that I didn't have a competent designing bone in my body - and went over how all I wanted was a decent personal website.
Some time after that Jack McDade released his Radical Design Course, and boy after that intro video - I was hooked. I felt like this was exactly what I needed, something that could help me change the way I think about design, rather than a tutorial for some design software (which is all I'd ever looked at before). I'm paraphrasing here, but one of the most important things I learnt from the course was that you don't need a hard and fast set of requirements and a rigid process to design successfully - you need to kinda be "loosey goosey" with it, have fun with it, and learn to enjoy it.
Anyway, I'm not even done with the course (yet) - I've watched less than half the content so far. BUT even that has empowered me to create this site, which I know isn't some groundbreaking piece of design work, but is infinitely better than anything I've ever created before.
Now I do want to note that by trade I'm a backend developer, I'm not (by any stretch of the imagination) a frontend guy - so, the implementation may be a bit off, but I'm happy with it and that's what matters.
That said, I will be incrementally improving and updating the site as I pick up new tips and tricks, and just iterating on what I've got here already, until I think I've got something truly great (by my standards).
Inspiration
Colours & the stripes
All based on my riding goggles!
Font(s)
The "archive"
Article view
It's just tailwind typography plugin with a couple tweaks. I was inspired by not having to style entry content myself.
Statamic 😍
Not only did I (kinda) rip off Jack McDade's designs - by using Statamic I had him do most of the work too! For real though, if you're making a custom blog - why aren't you using Statamic? There's absolutely no reason not to, literally cannot think of one.
What's next
A brief summary:
- Understand & implement Bard
- The content layout on here is still boring! and I know Bard can change that!
- Play with more colours
- It has been pointed out to me that this site kinda looks like the German flag
Times I said "Jack McDade" in this article (excluding just now): 5