Design Services

Hi! I like web design. I like it enough that I think I would do it for money, and I'm good enough at it that I think people would pay me to do it on the side.

But I have little experience building for clients, and I have no portfolio, so I'm hoping to do a couple projects for free. I want to learn what kind of process I like, what the common kinks are, and build new skills so that when I start monetizing I can provide an exceptional service.

(Also, I like web design enough, and am sufficiently invested in my friends having beautiful and active personal websites that I would do it for free.)

If you're a friend of mine who would like to commission a website design/redesign for free from me, here's my process:

  1. Reach out to me (signal, discord) if you're interested. I'll let you know if I can take on your project at the moment. If I can, let's get going!
  2. Get me a sample of the vibe. Compile a sample of things you like — your aesthetics — in a google doc, Pinterest moodboard, markdown file, whatever you prefer. This can be images, screenshots of other websites, verbal descriptors e.g. "fancy medieval documents," "looks like a newspaper," "feels like a garden," "retro 1990s/atari," "academic," etc. — and tell me what you want to do with it. Showcase projects? Post essays? Just host an about page with links out to other sites? If you have layout preferences lmk too — really out there layouts are cool, and so are well-executed traditional ones!
  3. I'll come up with a mockup or multiple, depending on how much you gave me to go off of; we can talk through what you think, change directions, refine.
  4. Once we're set on a design, we can pick a platform/static site generator that fits your use case and I'll build the site!

I currently have 1 project in progress.

My skills and preferences

I'm very good at layout and typography. I create sites that are fast, lightweight, responsive, and attractive. I'm strongly opinionated in this regard; it's important to me that pages load quickly and feel snappy. Hence, I prefer working in raw html/css, but have used frameworks from time to time where needed/useful.

Websites vs. Web apps

I have strong programming skills. I'm happy to build small Javascript aesthetic features for your website (e.g. fun animations, small features) but probably don't commission me if you want much more JS than that — I'm a designer, not an engineer; I build websites, not web apps!

There's a reason that this site requires no javascript. (The only exception is MathJax, which uses JS to render equations and math, because I didn't want to build my own latex rendering or pre-rendering.)

< Home