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A Swift (Design) Kick In the Ass

The Mind of Bryan Veloso at Age 23

The Web Design Era
Automattic
San Jose, CA
DISCLAIMER
This is a legacy post written before 2013 . While the content has survived numerous site migrations and content management systems, some formatting and links may be broken. I've done my best to fix things under my control.

Note: If you’ve seen Simplebits lately, then you’ll know where I’m coming from.

Sometimes all of us need a good swift kick in the ass to get something going, me especially. It’s been scaring me lately, that the subject of this blog has slowly begun to straddle the line between design and programmer. I guess that’s not really bad, per se. But it’s like when you give to one talent, you take away from another. Like, I’m a lot more focused when I’m doing something, but I’ve sacrificed my ability to do something and listen to somebody at the same time - much to Jen’s dismay.

But not let’s get off topic here, this is about me getting kicked in the ass. I’ve promised you an Avalonstar that’s better than this one, and I’m pretty mad at myself that I haven’t been able to produce that yet. I’ve just sort of been, putting it off. Well, I had a small talk with Dan and asked if I could take the same track that he’s taking with his next design - stripping everything. The way I see it, if I strip Avalonstar’s style, then every time I see it, I’ll want to do something to it. I’ll be sort of forced to make this place better. The odd thing is, is that I have all my wireframes on my white board. Everything is planned out, there’s just no design behind it - yet.

So here’s the obvious note, by the end of the month, the Aries Project will start evolving. Every feature that I want to put in here will be here, just not styled. You’ll be able to help me grow through this process and hopefully get my ass back into the designer’s seat - rather than the programmer’s.

In closing: take your screenshots now, use the comments if you feel like you need to object or leave a suggestion for what you’d like to see, or just sit back and watch the fun. Oh and thanks Dan, for that swift (and hopefully unintentional) kick in the ass. ;)

Avalonstar is the 25-year-old personal website of Bryan Veloso: streamer, professional user interface designer, hobbyist developer, lifelong gamer, and compass of purpose.

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The text of this website is set in Geologica, Andada Pro, and Optician Sans. Built by hand with Astro and GitHub. Hosted on my Mac Mini using Bun.

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