What's Up With Your Website?

Several of my clients have browsed my site (currently that takes all of about 3-and-a-half minutes) and had similar comments... uh...Brian, where are the graphics? Where's the cool design, like you did for our website?

Actually, I take issue with that... I didn't know I had any "design" at all. But, I understand why one would ask the question.

I've helped develop hundreds of websites during my career, and they've all been awesome. (OK... varying degrees of awesome.) While I will take credit for the underlying architecture of these sites, I will never take credit for the graphic design. I work with many talented people who can do a much better job at that. Of course, I can always criticize someone else's design -- and that has a valuable place in helping get to a final product. (And to drive the designers crazy. I take pride in that too.)

It goes further than that, though. Let me explain a bit about myself. With very few exceptions -- like my calendar, accounting program and a couple of documentation tools -- my entire digital life is composed of plain text files. All my notes are in plain text format. Code I write is in plain text format. Even documents you may receive from me that DO have formatting, were originally composed in plain text format using Markdown. (This webpage was written in Markdown.) So, if you haven't guessed by now, I'm pretty much a minimalist, therefore it seems only fitting that my website should reflect this part of my psyche. You won't find the latest Shiny Widget on my site unless it serves some purpose to the visitor. And right now, the purpose of my site is pretty simple. Minimalist, if you will.

Of course, I'll continue updating and adding info to my site. For instance, you'll soon find a Projects section where I'll post examples of sites I've architected (with graphics... yay!). You may also find the occasional screenshot of some cool app that I'm reviewing. And who knows... someday a Shiny Widget just might make an appearance. (Also be on the look out for leprechauns and unicorns, as they will herald the coming of the Shiny Widget.) However, until then, I'm purposely keeping the site design to a bare minimum. Because that just reflects who I am.

So there.