You haven't seen a new post from me since right before the turn of the new year so you might be wondering if Xbox is really the only thing I've been doing. It's not. After nine months of hard work my redesign is finally live.
I never thought I would get the chance to write about my new redesign — to be honest, I never thought I would even get as far as redesigning. Every time I opened Photoshop I would design subconsciously thinking I would never use this design and trash it shortly after.
designing for yourself is tough
It all started on Christmas, according to the meta data on my earliest PSD. Who knows how many other PSD's I deleted prior to this. My problem started from within. The only thing I knew was that I had outgrown my site because I had grown personally, professionally, and creatively since I first designed it back in 2007. I've preached this plenty times before: quality design doesn't exist without predefined goals. It's like driving blind, but only designing blind.
Deep down inside me I knew my goals, but I hadn't developed them yet.
I finally realized in April that I needed to get some goals out of my head so I pulled out my notebook for the first time and sketched. In result I went straight to photoshop and was able to produce a mass header which eventually made it to launch — with minor tweaks of course.
When salvaging fails
I tried to preserve my last design as much as possible; it went through three realigns before I realized it just wasn't working out for me. I knew it wasn't right for me all along, but everyone seemed to continue to like it so I continued to salvage it. All attempts at realigning my site was me ignoring the fact that I needed a real redesign.
Initially it didn't have a navigation so my first realign added that. The second consisted of an entire rewrite of the front-end so that it used EM's instead of PX. With a site like I had, with intense graphics, getting everything to scale perfectly with EM's was a total pain. The last realign was my last attempt at salvaging what I had in attempt to produce something that was more "me" — I think Matt Brett says it perfect about his redesign:
"I sat down and took a good look at my online presence. How I portrayed myself as a person, a professional, and what role my website played in all of this." — Matt Brett
After my two year old site had made it in as a SXSW 2009 Web Awards Finalist, I knew it was time to really get started on a new design. My thought process was this: if work I did two years ago was still being honored, just think where my current work could go.
Could be the last redesign
You see some of the best web designers go without a redesign for years. I most certainly can tell you that they know their sites could use a refresh, but time isn't always that easy to come by. Great web designers know it's more than just making it look better or more modern.
When I made the decision to put forth the effort to redesign, I made a promise to myself. I promised that I would only put out something that could last me a life time. Let's be honest with ourselves, life doesn't slow down and this may very well be my last redesign.
timing [and hard work] is everything
Having been planning this redesign for over nine months, it's finally here. It could not have come at a better time. I'm excited for the future and I'm excited to share some exciting ideas / personal projects in the near future.
Until next time, follow me on twitter, @michaeldick