I’ve spent the majority of today enjoying some long-overdue snow and redesigning justinrussell.com. It’s been just over two years since I did an overhaul of my home page, and a few things led me to expedite its modernization. I’d like to go into my thought process a little bit (if nothing else, it will serve as a debriefing for my very scattered mind).
I’d like to think that the justinrussell.com redesign is the first of my next generation of Web sites and services. I’d really love to have a lot of my ideas completed this year, but I decided to start out with something familiar to ease myself back into the whole dev-on-the-side thing. justinrussell.com has a much more prominent design focus than ever before, and it also combines a few concepts I’ve been contemplating over the last months and years.
I’ll be honest; I’m not a designer. I can make usable interfaces, but I become lost when it comes to the artistic side of design. I prefer minimal design, and I like being able to easily focus on the main sections of the page without being distracted.
As you’ll notice, I’ve reduced the number of pages on the site. In fact the justinrussell.com page is not much more than a simple splash page that acts as a gateway to each of my “personalities”. Someone concluded a reply to a comment I made on a Flickr photo with the following:
I really like the way you have bound together your online identities at www.justinrussell.com/
To be honest, I always thought I lacked that. The new design really drives the point home that I divide my time between my interests, and I enjoy each equally.
You’ll also notice that my contact information is much more prominent on this version. I’ve had a couple of comments recently that people were unable to find a phone number for me, and they actually called me at work because I guess it was the only phone number on the Web remotely linked to me in any way. My (206) 350-HI-JR is now on every page, and there’s a link to a new contact page where you can find all of my relevant contact information, social networking links, and even a new message form to make sure whatever you have to say gets past the dreaded spam filters.
But honestly, it all comes down to Collage. Collage is really the epitome of what I wanted ufeed to be, and I’ve been working on and off on it since I launched the site. Quite simply, it is a central place to find my work, favorites, comments, and recommendations. If you’d like to stay on top of what I’m doing, go to Collage. As of right now you’ll see posts from my blog, Flickr images, YouTube videos, del.icio.us links, and more. It’s also easy to add other sources as they arise. I really don’t want to make you check five different sites, so just head to Collage.
That’s about it for the new justinrussell.com. Check it out and let me know what you think. It will change over time, but the general focus will probably stay the same for some time to come. I’m excited for what’s coming.
(Oh, one last thing – I’ve installed a comment filter on my blog. Just answer the simple math question and you’ll be good to go when you post a comment. Sorry for the extra field, but I really don’t like five-digit comment spam counts.)