There’s some kind of an undisputed beauty in a plain HTML page.

It does everything a webpage is expected to do. It’s light as a feather. It’s natively responsive. It’s intuitive, focused and functional. Most importantly, it gets the point across.

Many fear “The Blank Canvas”. Understandably, infinite choices can be paralyzing. Not for me. The idea of so many possibilities excites me. The tension between clarity and chaos is both the challenge and the joy of design. I like to start with the content, so here it is — a website genesis: from my mind, through the keyboard and onto the web, right in front of you. Simple, frictionless, and arousing.

Personal Websites: The RenaiRSSance

I first started blogging around 2009, and I remember all of the romanticism around personal blogs. Social networks have taken over since, and publishing on TikTok, YouTube or Instagram rather than your own site became mainstream because that’s where the people are — you just have to win them over. I was never much into that.

Recently, I feel like a new wave of decentralized IndieWeb with small, personal websites is emerging, and I’m all for it. I like the idea of being in control of what I produce. And a deeper connection with the audience. I don’t want to embrace the algorithm and fight through the noise. I don’t want you to have to pay or watch some ads before you can experience what I made.

So, for now, you can keep yourself updated via the RSS Feed if you’d like to.

The Whys

You may’ve heard of designers and their constant struggle with portfolios. I’m no exception. I’ve redesigned this website far too many times, more than I’m willing to admit. Not 20% of those redesigns ever made it to production. I often got carried away by some of the many excuses in favor of starting from scratch, either it being a new typeface I found, a new CSS technique, a design tool I wanted to try, or a new IA concept that came across my mind. The ideas usually looked fine in the beginning, but I was often losing interest in completing them as I progressed.

The reason might be simple: I wasn’t having a clear goal in front of me. Naturally, I got too comfortable with keeping creations for myself. Especially when it comes to writing. And that’s so easy to justify. I don’t have the right platform. Who’s going to read it, anyways? My domain name is too long and hard to remember. I need to finish the design first, code it, host it, and only then I can publish my thoughts.

What’s funny is, all of these go against everything that I usually do and stand for, both personally and professionally. Still, they found a crack and got into my life via this site. Not anymore. So, here it is. Just words. And me sharing them. And you reading them. And it feels good.

The Approach: Designing in the Open

So, this time around, I’ll be approaching this bottom up. Starting with this simplest HTML document. I will be redesigning it in the open, while documenting my thoughts as I progress. No pretense, no posturing — just the raw, evolving process of shaping a digital space. While I always found this kind of a grotesque philosophy rather attractive, it’s obvious that it will not just stay this way.

Of course, it’s not starting from nothing. It’s years of accumulated design principles and systems, information architecture, and coding skills in the back of my head. But I’m deliberately resisting the urge to copy-paste something and tweak it. It’s going to be fun!

For now, I’m starting with:

• An emblem that I’ve started using a few years back
• Site title
• A short intro
• And this text entry

And I’m going to let it grow naturally from here:

The Takeaway

If you’re going to keep one thought from here, let it be this: Building for the web is actually simple and frictionless. It’s just an HTML page. Go, make it. Use whatever tool you like: code editor, no-code editor, AI generator, or even a photograph of a piece of paper. Publish, then build from there. If I can do it — so can you!

Thank you for keeping up.