Simplifying and streamlining.

Photo by Polina Tankilevitch

Not much of an article from me this week. By the time you're reading this, I'll have spent the weekend expending vast amounts of energy hurtling down a mountain on my mountain bike. This wasn't the original plan for the weekend, however when opportunity calls one must answer.

I will, however, take this opportunity to do a bit of housekeeping.

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, we launched Titan Medical. Setting up that website, and I had a lot of fun doing it, has given me some renewed enthusiasm to give this website a bit of a refresh too. It will be required eventually anyway, as I refocus my efforts under each umbrella. When I first set up this website I didn't really know where to start, and had limited ideas about what I wanted it to look like. Now that Titan has launched, I've got much more clarity around what I want this website to represent, and what I want it to look like. It will, largely, begin to look more like the portfolio-style websites synonymous with designers and design agencies.

Part of this new coat of paint will also include a shift in how I present the Journal. My plan is to move the journal more to a text-based blog, rather than leading with images. The inclusion of images was initially intended to help with engagement, like adding an image to your LinkedIn post helps with engagement, but as with LinkedIn I'm not sure I care much about that anymore. Most of my posts don't actually require images, and the inclusion of a feature image is largely because my current format demands it.

That's not to say that I won't have any images. Just that I won't require a feature image for each article, and won't include thumbnails in my Journal page. Many blogs do this of course; Daring Fireball is one, and Seth Godin is another. This will likely mean the Journal takes a less prominent position on the website, but I'm perfectly fine with that. Philosophically, this slight back-seating of the blog will allow me to be a bit more casual and relaxed with it, which might also permit it to be a bit more conversational. I also feel, being largely text only, that it'll sort the people that care enough to actually read my articles from those who don't.

One other small but deliberate advantage it will have is that I'll no longer need to spend time finding an image that suits what I'm writing about. More than once I've spent so long looking for a nice stock image (Pexels or Unsplash if you're interested) that it almost would have been quicker to have drawn one or taken one myself. I've lamented about how long it takes to write my articles in the past, so anything I can do to simplify and streamline the process is welcome. Especially as I become busier with my various projects.

All of that is to say that as I move things around on the back end in preparation for the refresh, you might start to see things look a bit wonky. It's subtle, but the top menu has already changed. Necessary as part of upgrading Semplice 6 to Semplice 7. I expect the grid layout and typography to be the most evident.

I'm of course always open to feedback. My email is in the footer.