Spending two minutes in the Design Pit of Despair.

Pinging around the Indieweb I came across the personal site for Jim Nielsen and his latest post, My Failed Personal Site Redesign. Scanning the headline, my empathy immediately kicked into high gear as I have been there myself too many times. And I know anyone reading this has likely been there too. I was pleasantly surprised that what I thought was going to be a short, ranty, kind of post is actually a pretty thorough look at Jim’s design process from start to finish. Nice!

As you can probably guess from the title, I decided to keep what I have and throw away what I built. I never really got this to a place where I liked it. I liked it pretty good on desktop, but mobile was an afterthought in the design phase and it shows in how I tried to make the design fold down to narrower screens. 

Jim, I have—neigh, we have—all been there. As much as I love Ethan Marcotte to death, I curse the day he showed me Responsive Web Design. Beep, I know I said, “Oh, cool,” but inside I was like, “Dammit, this is going to ruin everything.” And it did. Trump was elected and we endured a pandemic. You may not see these events as connected but I saw it plain as day—the dead, rum-soaked chicken sprawled across the pentagram, in between the Fall birch-scented Yankee Candle candles.

Amateur voodoo practices aside, let's get back to Jim...

I still really like the style. And I might try it again. But this exercise made me realize how hard it is to pull off something that seems so simple (I already knew that, but it was re-emphasized yet again).

The design is great! It reminds me of days gone by. Elements of the sketches remind me of elements from something Mike Rundle or Matt Brett would have come up with in those early days. But I understand that transforming one screen into the other and getting it right is a challenge that requires a lot of work. More effort than we have energy for anymore. I say we because I know a person or two who is in that same spot right now.

I’m glad Jim rolled back the repository and continues to publish. That’s more important though I understand when it doesn’t feel that way.