Designing in the open, apparently
Iāve been spending some time up in my blogās CSS this weekend, re-doing some of the typography and going for a simpler approach with some of the design. Since writing CSS is 98% of my job anyway, I donāt really mind… but Iām still shocked at the tendency I had to over-engineer certain things. š I decided to fuck off with a preprocessor and ājust write CSSā. I miss vanilla CSS. (Still, I find some of my CSS shameful, and most of it was just a refactor. Please donāt look at my source code. š)
It was mid-2018 when I released this existing design that I named Honolulu. I canāt believe that was three years ago. I generally find that two years pass before my blog designs seem to date…
Girlfriend thought she was being so clever and creative with the date flying off to the left, and the captions being in an invisible left column, and the grid post display. I mean, design trends, right? š I think, though, similar to my personal style, my tastes in design change, even if I donāt follow any kind of trend.
Iām not a designer by trade, so much of my ādesigningā happens in the browser, and Iām usually pretty open to improving UX where Iāve accidentally made it shit. I care about it, but… but this is also just a blog. There isnāt a lot to consider when it comes to the experience, at least compared to a more complex bit of software or an app (hello, my day job). I felt like I needed to embrace more simplicity in the way my blog looked and felt, as well as having it feel more clean. After working on Janeās blog design, I was inspired to update mine to feel more refreshed and clean.
Typography changes
I changed the font of the headings from Poppins to Lexend. Poppins was round, and fun, and easy to read, but it felt a bit childish and I wanted something that was still sans-serif and somewhat bold and round, but more āgrown-upā. I settled on Lexend because it had a bit of spunk.

I changed the body font from Libre Franklin to Assistant. I donāt know what it was about Libre Franklin, but it felt somewhat corporate and boring for a blog. When it comes to body type, I like fonts that are not round at all, and somewhat tall and narrow ā but not condensed. PT Sans, Source Sans Pro ā and other fonts similar to those ā are in the realm of what I like. They are also not too thin or thick.
The other thing that bothered me immensely about Honolulu is how clever I tried to be with the colour palette. š¤¦š»āāļø I tried to use five colours, because the idea was that I wanted something pretty light (well, before dark mode became a thing), with āsplashes of colourā. šØ That worked really well, but felt a bit mishmashed in practicality. Again, I want to simplify whatās going on there so that the look and feel is cleaner.
The guise of perfectionism and the need to publish something ācompleteā
I donāt think itās all āperfectā, but then again, what is the point? Perfectionism is a guise for the discomfort that something brings. Weāre all afraid of openly working on something, or putting out something less than perfect, because we fear judgement, or that people will see our mistakes. Iāve decided to be OK with that. Even after having worked away for hours on Honolulu, thinking that itās ready to go, I put it out into the world knowing that it wasnāt 100% complete and that there would be some issues Iād have to fix, or feedback to address. (Heck, the dark mode wasnāt even there until dark mode was a thing.) So whatās the harm in publishing an update to the typography on my blog even though there is more Iād like to change and improve?
Frankly, Iām over all the āversionsā and āeditionsā I used to create for my blog. Iāve had some five versions of Hey Georgieās design since 2012, and when my blog was under a different name I had over 15, and before that I had upwards of 44 different themes/designs that I changed literally every two weeks. I mean, I knew nothing about design back in the early 2000s. š But in 2021 ā and I mentioned this in my blog post a couple of weeks ago about not being a content creator ā my blog is something that grows with me.
And itās not just the writing in my posts, but itās how it looks and feels and how I express myself with it. Gone are the days when Iād come up with a fancy-pants new idea and overhaul my blogās design, and then drop the curtains and show it to the world. Welcome the days ahead where Iāll make small improvements over time ā in my own time, and when I feel like it ā and am open to feedback and critique. These days are the days I care just a little bit less about aesthetic and a bit more about the writing, but not so much that I become a clone of the publishing platform everyone (including myself) loves to hate that starts with a letter M.
Other updates and whatās ahead
I removed my poetry collection the off switch is broken from the main navigation, and the archive (because ugh, why… and that page is ugly). But in super fun updates, I updated my About page to be far more succinct ā and you can actually find a discount code for #tosib there. š°
You can expect more gradual updates and improvements to my blog over time. I donāt really have a list of things I want to fix. I think Iāll just poke through my blog and see what I come across. Kind of like housework, you know? š§¹š
I mean, was just thinking about how the categories are quite disorganised. What is the category for this post? Does it even really matter? I think it should belong in something called āBlogā but I rarely talk about the literal technicalities of my blog, so maybe itās time to create one? š Yeah, fuck it, Iāll create one. š
The title and premise of this post was inspired by Brad Frostās article from 2013, Designing In The Open. Even eight years on, it is a concept that has stuck with me and that I really take a liking to.
Comments on this post
Jane
I’m viewing this from my phone, thanks for my phone, so I don’t totally know how it looks for me on a desktop yet, but so far I like it š¤©
The theme you made for me went out before it was perfect, and it was then that I realized that the pressure of life perfection is bullshit. It’s better to publish it and then perfect it over time rather than to hold off, because it’s when you publish it that you see how it really looks and behaves.
I did the opposite of what you did, in terms of the blog category š I hated that mine was entitled Blogging, because it didn’t encompass everything that was in it And everything that could be in it ā so I moved it to the Internet category š¤·āāļø because I hadn’t really put anything into that one anyways, and I had the Internet category that was previously a tag, and I just thought it fit better. š I revamped my categories this year, something I realized I do about every year. š¤
Jane
Ah ā I just realized the color scheme! There is still that peachy color, but there’s purple now, too š¤©
Georgie
Haha the purple was always there! š I actually want to stick to two colours and it was just going to be blue and
peachpuff
. But Iāll see how I go. Whatever works, works! šI think I have an āInternetā category but it seems strangely so high-level, and I rarely write blog posts about the internet… but I guess you could say the same about āBlogā. I donāt love to have too many categories, but I think I am open to creating new ones if it simply doesnāt fit. Better than trying to wedge it in somewhere for the sake of being minimalistic haha.
Jane
Viewing this on my desktop lets me see it even more. Poppins is a favorite font of mine, too, but I feel it’s been used so much and the rounded letters made it feel so…
The typographical change, viewing it on my desktop, makes it look a lot more mature and sophisticated, yet still a bit fun.