A Decade in the Making

"We weren't sure about working with you initially because your website was nothing special" said a client, after we'd thankfully concluded our first project together (which went very well by the way).

Recounting that criticism even now hits me like an airborne tangerine to the back of the head. But the client was absolutely correct - my website was underwhelming for a professional website designer and generally creative person in 2020. For 2014 - the year the version in question was launched - the website design looked good, functioned well, and was built with practicality in mind. Up until it's decommissioning day it performed well organically in search engines for various queries and it was easy to manage from my administrative perspective. But as with everything it had simply gotten tired; approximately a decade in age. It no longer reflected my best work, my appetite for keeping it fresh had depreciated and ultimately its fate was sealed - it was time to start again.

So why did it take me over 10 years to rebuild?

I once quoted writer Oliver Burkeman in my email newsletter as saying "It's shocking to realise how readily we set aside even our greatest ambitions in life, merely to avoid easily tolerable levels of unpleasantness." Ten years of readiness in my case. The task of resuscitating my website was daunting in ways I couldn't quite quantify. For years I'd coerced myself into flip-flopping between two scapegoat justifications for my inaction: I'm fully booked in spite of the website's condition so how bad can it actually be? and Surely all reputable web professionals have neglected websites - that's the hallmark of being in high demand. These were great excuses to coast on for a while, and not in all disingenuous, but eventually my beaten pride won out.

In 2022 I usurped whatever was stalling progress and commissioned myself to create a new website. Rounds of fresh design mock-ups materialised effortlessly, the best of which were swiftly committed to code. User journeys were simplified, content presentation was vastly improved, UI was styled to the hilt. After many many evenings of stolen time it was all but ready to launch.

But then fault-lines emerged. I'd looked at it for too long. I was too close to it; too heady about reaching the finishing line. I started doing that classically dangerous thing creatives do; pulling at threads. Before long my ignorance of the messier details waned. The cut-corners were too rough on the eyes and the placeholders were embedded beyond substitution. I wasn't totally happy with what I'd created.

Social media, as if on cue, was awash with positive affirmation; put the thing out there and not fixate on perfection. Launch now and correct later. Time is money. We'll all be dead soon. And so on. The affect this had was the contrary. In the face of such abundant motivation the imperfections prevailed, and I abandoned the project, burying my head in other things. The new website was relegated to the deepest recesses of my consciousness and as it turns out was unsalvageable for another few years.

At the very start of 2024 I'd gone through a minor but significant metamorphosis, culminating not only in a brighter outlook on life but also a laminated list of New Year's Resolutions; a list I found I was uncharacteristically adhering to several months post-conception. Upon that list was a familiar foe - building my new website. With renewed agenda the website embarked on another redesign process starting with a moodboard I'd collated over time, which was at last paying dividends. The references there, combined with the salvageable ashes of the previous build gave way to an unexpected realisation; version 2.0 was not an irredeemable folly but actually a first draft. I wasn't far off the mark at all. A lot of the code was recycled, the design principles were all heading in the right direction - it really was just the rough edges marring my vision.

So after several more months of graft (snatched around my other commitments), there was ne'er a pixel left to push or a sentence left to tweak. The project portfolio was refined, the newsletter section was working harder and the charity service pages vastly improved. It was ready. It was launched.

And then I wrote this.

So welcome, dear reader, to the refurbished website of freelance designer, coder and illustrator Andi Best. Do let me know what you think (or if you spot any dodgy rendering/spelling).