Update 4/5/08: Apparently while I was cheering on my wife, sister-in-law and friends at the BridgeRun, my site went naked a bit early. Thanks to the person who let me know about my preemptive nudity.

Update 4/2/08: Ok folks, show’s over, move along. WHAT? You really want the 90s April Fools version back? Just go back to the homepage and select “1998” from the dropdown on your right.

I couldn’t exactly encourage you all to get experimental last week without doing something a little off the wall myself. If you saw me speak at SXSW or at the Webmaster Jam Session, you’ve probably seen this version of my personal site straight from Geocities in 1998:

Inspired by Cameron Moll’s classic suggestion to steal from my own work, I’ve extracted the late nineties flare from the above design and injected it into my current site. Rather than starting with a clean slate on this site, I thought I’d update (or revert in this case) the CSS alone. Yes that’s right folks, the glorious design you see before you was possible simply by swapping the stylesheet. I was tempted to bring in the good ole’ blink and marquee tags, but that would have violated my self-imposed rule of not touching the existing HTML. I hope you’ll find that the site is still quite functional. You can even swap the stylesheet back to the original default by returning to the homepage and selecting “Contemporary Home” from the dropdown in the sidebar.

For those of you who are suddenly inspired to redesign your own sites - Really now, who isn’t? - I’d like to encourage you to check out my book: “The Principles of Beautiful Web Design”. I’m sure my tips about layout, color, texture, type and imagery will be just the help you need to tweak your own website design into something of this level.

I believe my work here is done. I’m gonna go rummage through the attic now to see if I can find my Garbage Pail Kids stickers, Soap shoes, Hypercolor shirt, pogs, and slap-bracelets. Peace!

I couldn’t help but grab the arms of my office chair to keep from falling over this afternoon as I checked out Bryan Veloso’s latest redesign of avalonstar. The layered textures, unorthodox structure and analogous color scheme really set it apart from anything else out there.

In the words of Levar Burton, “Don’t take my word for it!”

For the last few years, it seems the web-design community has been in a bit of a rut. I’ve seen a lot of unique design flicker through the CSS galleries, but we (myself included) have been relying too much on cozy conventions. We know the principles of beautiful design, but we’re too stuck on standard site structures, browser limitations, and popular opinions to really put those principles to test. It seems the times they are a changing though as Bryan isn’t the only high-profile blogger pushing the envelope:

• In January, Dan Cedarholm realigned with a gridlastic (grid-based, but scalable) version of his current site design.
• Then, in February Jeff Croft unveiled a redesign consisting of brown, pink, and yellow. While that isn’t a color combination I recommended in my book, he pulled it off and it looks great.
• Finally, Nathan Smith created a whole new CSS Framework in response to a personal “design itch”, and has announced that he’s using that new framework in his latest redesign.

That’s by no means a cumulative list; I’m just saying that exciting, industry-changing experimentation is coming back into style. I’ve personally had the redesign bug crawling around on my back for over a year now, but the desire to do something “different” has been keeping my mind churning and my hand from moving. Recent redesigns like Bryan’s are definitely fuel for the fire, and I’d love to see this glimmer of change flame up into a revitalization of the personal website. I think it’s time for us all to take a a step back and realize that, “We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of the dreams!”

The following is my entry into the Firefox 3 T-Shirt Contest. I was inspired by Daft Punk, Flat Hicks, and White Chocolate Mochas. I’d like to thank my wife for encouraging me to design something besides websites for a change…even with a gimp hand.

The Design Process

Hand-Scribbled Calcite Pro

One-Color Vector Design

T-Shirt Preview & Official Entry

The image above is the second in a series of collages from a childhood sketchbook.

Over the years, I’ve met, been inspired by, and become friends with many of my fellow web weavers. Getting to meet a lot of those people in person at my first SXSW last year and then again at The Webmaster Jam Session last Summer has been an awesome experience. Despite what anybody says about the size/growth of the SXSWi conference, being there really shows you what an intimate, tight-knit, and amicable group the web design/dev community really is. I can’t wait to see some familiar faces and meet tons of new ones. Here’s a list of fellow bloggers I hope to run into in Austin and their Pre-SXSW commentaries:

• Douglas Bowman
• Jared Christensen
• Dan Cederholm
• Jeff Croft
• Rob Weychert
• Lea Alcantara
• Dave Shea
• Paul Boag
• Jeffrey Zeldman
• Richard Rutter
• Matthew Pennell
• Cindy Li
• Andy Budd
• “Rands”
• Anton Peck

Of course, there are many other people attending that I’d like to see again or finally meet in person; those are just the ones I could find blog posts from.

Here’s my tentative schedule for the panels and parties I plan to attend. For many of the time slots, I’m double or even triple booked. This just means I either: a. Haven’t made up my mind which panel/event to attend or b. Plan to try to check out more than one in the same time slot. If you’re going to be there too, whoever you are, I’d love to get a chance to say hello. Just drop a comment here or swing by my book reading. I’ll be giving a presentation featuring a practical example of how to apply the information from my book and then hanging around the book store to sign copies - if anyone wants their book signed. (Sorry for the “-” disclaimer…it still just feels so weird/humbling to say I’ll be signing copies of my book.) Fell and broke two bones in my left hand last night, so it looks like I won’t be signing anything unless you want some right-handed chicken scratch. :( Also, I have a special treat for the first 74 people who can tell me “…some trivial bit of info that can’t be found online…” There was 75 special treats, but I ATED ONE. You won’t know if you don’t go…

Update: got a cast to match my business cards.