Somewhere along the way, personal sites started borrowing the same visual language as every product landing page. The layouts became cleaner, but the people became harder to see.
The missing texture
The early web had fingerprints. A strange background, an overly specific links page, a tiny experiment that only worked in one browserâthese were evidence that someone cared enough to make a corner of the internet their own.
A personal site can be useful without sanding off every odd edge.
Build a garden
A garden is a better metaphor than a publication. Notes can begin small, connect to one another, and change as you learn. The archive becomes a map of attention rather than a performance of certainty.
A few working rules
- Publish useful fragments before they become grand essays.
- Link generously, including away from your own site.
- Keep one detail that a design committee would remove.
- Make the site simple enough that you want to tend it.