Why I Redesigned This Website?

On May 6, 2022, I launched the first version of this website, a two-page website containing few paragraphs about me, and some links on how to reach me out. 302 days later, I decided and immediately worked on a major redesign of my website, which is what you're probably seeing today; truth be told, I wish I did this sooner.

In this article, I'll show you the motivation behind the sudden decision to break everything and start over again.

Tech Stack

I spend some time thinking about the tech stack to use, mainly because I have an interest with something that I don't really use in the first place. In the end, I had to stick to things that I know to speed up the process:

Plus, Vercel's hobby account is free of charge, so I can ship my website as much as I want for free, as long as I follow their usage policy. Mad props to the guys behind Vercel team! Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.

The First Version

Initially, I planned this website to be plain and simple. This is the major driver on how I designed and built my website. In my head, I always thought of:

"Why would I put a lot of stuff here when people can see more details on my LinkedIn?"

I still find the statement above to be true. I want people to reach me through links that I provided, I don't want to re-invent the wheel and over-engineer things that I shouldn't.

After a weekend of writing code, I published the first version and it looks like this:

v1-index

v1-about

Unleashing Creativity

Few days later, I thought that the first version was too bland. I hated the end result, I had to sit down and think of a new design for my website. This time, I had to spend serious time to think and research about design and its trends, leading me to the second version of the website design.

The second version was a total oposite of the first one: it was a mix of colors, particularly pastel ones and typography techniques that I learned through researching website design trends for that year. Combined with a touch of my artistic personality, I managed to publish the second version of design a week later:

v2-index

v2-about

This design was on the internet for more than 300 days before I decided to make another major change on the design.

When I Realize Design is Hard

During the time when I was writing my first article, I stumbled into design-related problems, preventing me from moving forward:

  • Colors are everywhere. It's like somebody made a painting by throwing random colors in random places in the canvas. Picking a set of playful pastel colors started to bite me.

  • Element interactions became inconsistent. I noticed that there are different behaviors with some of elements like <a> tag, and I need to decide on how to resolve the problem to maintain the consistency across the website.

Analyzing the problems above, I realized that I don't have a proper design system. I spent too much of my time thinking about the tech stack and libraries to use, how to implement features like blogging, leaving no space to think about the design system.

Realizing the situation that I unintentionally created, I need to sit down and think about it, leading to the third version of my website design.

Seriously, Design is Really Hard

I am no way an expert with design systems, I am aware of that fact. In cases like this, I always do what I know best: ask an expert about it. But this time, I don't have somebody I personally know to ask about my problem. I had to rely on research for existing design systems on the internet and trust the people behind it.

With this, I came up with a design heavily inspired from an existing website over the web. I don't think that's a bad idea, in fact, I believe that the best compliment you can give an artist is to try copying their work.

Sticking to the tech stack that I know, and integrating a design system that I think would fit the vision for my website, I made the third design, which is what you're looking at right now.

Final Thoughts

I hope you had fun looking at my thought process. In case you have thoughts to share, feel free to message me through LinkedIn, or send me a mail! I am in process of thinking a way to drop comments around my blog, I may have the feature, or not. But we'll see.