Redesigning your own site is a tricky descent into introspection. It's yours. There's no client. It's supposed to say something about you. That leads to a lot of soul-searching. More than I expected, at least.
Making a statement about myself is always hard. How do I want to look? What do I have to say? Do I have anything to say? Is it sufficiently "me" or am I ripping off one of my favorite designers?
Well, of course I am. Everyone does. But I always try to do something original--oftentimes I find myself getting lost in the pressure of trying to come up with something that's not imitative. Like the semioticians say, everything's already been done.
I try to do things to throw myself off. This site uses an 11-column grid, in part to try to throw me off of the usual symmetries I use. I'm using an array of colors, instead of my usual red, black, and white. I must like being off-balance.
Technical stuff
This site gives me a lot to do. I've been using ExpressionEngine a lot lately (my previous site was built on it), and I like EE a great deal, but this site is built on Stacey, a flat-file cms that gives me a little more flexibility in some ways (especially for doing custom designs of posts), but a lot less flexibility in many other ways (there's no database!). I've been doing a lot of working around on that account.
Turns out, I also went for a minimal site design, quite unlike my old site (you can still see it, imaginatively archived at http://old.futuraprime.net/).
Now I have yet more to do.
So, does the site make a statement about me? Obviously. Is it the right one? I can only hope.
That's clearly enough introspection for a website that has my head stuck on the front page.
teaser: Redesigning your own site is a tricky descent into introspection. It's yours. There's no client. It's supposed to say something about you.