Writing · 5 pieces
Essays on how design gets done, and a working record of building a website from scratch.
Most of these were written in 2018 and are kept as they were written, with corrections added underneath rather than folded into the text. 2 of them describe the website this one replaced: a different site, on a different stack, at the same address. Those are marked below.
Rebuilding It, Eight Years Later
In 2018 I built this site in Dreamweaver and put it on shared hosting. In 2026 I rebuilt it from nothing on a different stack. A straight comparison of the two, including what the new one gave up.
Hosting My Own Website
Building a portfolio site from scratch in Dreamweaver on a shoestring, and everything that came after it: a host, a sitemap, and a long climb through page-speed scores.
A Test of Personality
Personality tests offer to tell you who you are. The real test is life, and the result is yours to shape rather than to read off a page.
Freelance Marketing
Two years of trying to market a freelance practice, from a signage board on a T-junction to AdWords and social media, and an honest accounting of how little of it worked.
A Mechanic at Work
Why a conveyor belt cannot do a designer's job. When you take your car in, you do not ask the salesperson to fix it.