A beginning

I’ve been tinkering with websites since I was 14,  so naturally I’ve thought about creating a blog before now. For the longest time, I’ve been content to let my work do the talking, and it’s only really been in the last few months that I’ve felt a need for an outlet outwith the context of my design work. To summarise a few things:

The blog is separate from my work/portfolio website, at least for now. The markup and CSS for my website is 3 years old and sub-par to say the least, so I was keen to start with a clean slate.

What you see now is intentionally minimal in both design and functionality. I want to start out by getting the simple things right, then gradually introduce ‘standard’ blog functionality like categories and archives as and when I feel they’re needed. Kinks will be ironed out over the coming days. With the help of Analog’s Hashgrid, I’ve started out by structuring the content using a uniform 6 (or 12, depending on how you look at it) column grid and creating a strong typography hierarchy underpinned by a 22px baseline grid. I’m not trying to claim that web is print or anything daft like that, it’s really just been an experiment for myself to find out how feasible these kinds of things are.

Not all elements are quite aligned to the baseline grid yet (the footer elements aren’t), nor can I ensure that all will be with your browser and OS combination. It’ll never be perfect, but there should at least be a rough approximation if you’re using a modern browser. Hold down G to see the grid, and G+H to hold it in place. While the grid is held in place, you can toggle it from the foreground to background by pressing F.

The blog lives or dies by the quality of the content, so as part of the simple beginnings, I’m keeping design imagery to a bare minimum. I just want to get writing without allowing myself to get sucked in to thinking of the design too much. If you’re a designer, I’m sure you know exactly what I mean.

I’ve added (or should I say removed) some styles for those reading the blog on an iPhone (see below), along with the inclusion of an icon for adding to your home screen.