Hello and welcome to the new version of Kyle Steed on the web. This has been, at least what feels like, a long time coming. What started as simple sketches in my journal months ago has now blossomed in to a fully functional work of wonder. But I'll save the mushy design details for later. In this first part, of what I plan to be a three part series, I want to focus on how my life has affected the new look of my site.
This time it's personal
When I first started out blogging nearly two years ago I wrote about the simple things in life, what my favorite tv show was, the new movie I just saw at the theater or maybe a new band I just started listening to. It was me testing the waters of documenting my life online and how to approach it. There wasn't really much of a focus on what I was writing about.
Compare that with more than two years later where I have narrowed my writing down to three main topics, and I feel that I've somewhat found my voice in the creative community.
More than words
Another lesson I've learned in life is that my actions speak louder than words. And I wanted to convey that somehow in my new design. Hence the new portfolio slideshow. That's one thing that always bothered me about my previous designs. I had not created a decent way of showing off what I could do. Not that I mean to boast, but if I'm not going to promote myself, then who will?
I think that old saying "content is king" is a great way to start a blog, but if you can do more than that, then I would encourage you to do so.
Getting out more
One of my main goals in life is to get out as much as possible and spend time with those I love. There is nothing more important than building relationship with real people. So with that in mind, I don't want to constantly sit at my computer and worry about what to write/design next. I want my blog to be able to handle my absence for a week or so and not feel like it's growing stagnant. And I think with the creation of my custom home page template I have found a good solution.
So I'm looking forward to what lies ahead in life, and my goal is to stay as transparent as possible through my writing and designs. In the second part of this series I will go over, from start to finish, the design decisions I had to work through, some good and some bad.