V7: Launch day
Expanded site, new design, same me
I started redesigning this site in January of 2020. Remember January of 2020? We didn’t know we were living in the Before Times. There were still a few people in the White House who weren’t Fox News hosts or meme coin shills or raw milk evangelists. Our tech bro billionaires hadn’t yet entered the endgame of their persistent campaign to annihilate whatever sense of objective reality we once shared. We were so young.
I wouldn’t have guessed it would take me nearly six years to get to launch day, but I always knew better than to think it would go quickly, because it wasn’t just a redesign, it was an expansion. I had set out to reclaim thousands of pieces of myself that had been scattered across the internet, and to give them a unified structure and coherent presentation. If I had kept my head down as I initially hoped to, I might have sorted it all out in under a year. But that would have been a much rougher draft than the seemingly simple site we’re looking at today.
Instead, I let myself step away for months at a time, giving ideas time and space to percolate both consciously and subconsciously, and at a distance from the work itself. Every time I came back to it, my vision for the final product, as well as how I would get there, was both more expansive and more refined. Eventually the product caught up to the concept, and though there are plenty of improvements I plan to make in the coming months, I ran out of reasons to say the site wasn’t ready to be out in the open. So here we are: Welcome to RobWeychert.com V7!
The blog, which a friend has likened to a collector’s edition box set, is where most of the action happens. It’s a multi-decade timeline that includes anything I deemed worthy of sharing that has a date attached to it. It collects, among other things, most of what I’ve posted over the years on my own domains, various social networks, and other places around the web and beyond. It’s a lot, and I don’t pretend it’s all gold, so, to sidestep the common blog pitfall of becoming a reverse-chronological burial ground, I’ve wrangled its mountain of metadata into a variety of browsing pathways to help visitors find stuff that might interest them. These are all succinctly described and easily accessible on the Blog landing page, but here’s some additional context:
- Highlights: For anyone who doesn’t know where to start, this handpicked collection of posts is an introduction to some of my thoughts, interests, and experiences. Some were chosen because they’ve attracted attention in the past, and some just because I like them.
- Media: Posts that are more visual than textual. I stole this idea from Twitter, which used to let you filter your feed to be more akin to Instagram.
- Creators: A lot of what I post about is things people have made: art, design, film, music, performance, speaking, writing, and more. Here are those people. (The co-option of “creator” in the influencer age is maddening, but I’m here to take it back.)
- Locations: Posts’ locations are included when relevant, and this landing page lets you explore increasingly specific locations by drilling down through countries, states, cities, and venues.
- Film diary: This is co-located on Letterboxd, pretty much the only social network I still use. Along with the three bullet points that follow, the film diary is notable for containing a lot of posts (though not all) that merely log an activity without commenting on it. I’m not sure if people will find it disorienting that there are “empty” posts that are essentially titles without content, but I’ve tried to design my post listings to give a clear indication of their contents or lack thereof, so we’ll see.
- Music library: I wish I could put dates to my entire music library, but my iTunes data reliably covers my last 20 years of album acquisitions, which is much better than nothing.
- Concert diary: This was previously a separate site called Tinnitus Tracker. As V7’s scope ballooned, it made sense to discontinue TT and fold it into my main site, which was a relief, because I was never satisfied with TT’s design.
- Reading diary: I’ve intermittently logged books I’ve read over the years on Goodreads and elsewhere, but hopefully I’ll be more consistent about it now that it has this home.
- Topic: A limited taxonomy of more traditional tags. This can be a useful way to browse if you want to avoid the aforementioned “empty” posts, since topic tags are generally reserved for substantive posts.
- Date: Another more traditional blog browsing method, month views offer snapshots of what I was up to and/or what was on my mind at a particular time.
Apart from the above browsing methods, there is one more: series. Any post that’s directly associated with other posts (e.g. a tweet thread) includes a list of all posts in that series. In fact, the post you’re reading right now is part of my long-running series documenting this V7 redesign as it was happening. I got out of the documentation habit in the later stages of the process, so to properly complete this series, I still need to write about the site’s components, typography, iconography, layout, color, generative background patterns, and a few other odds and ends. Keep an eye out for those posts.
In the meantime, there’s plenty to explore, including my projects and shop. A big part of this site’s raison d’être is to connect with kindred spirits, so if you find something interesting we have in common, please feel free to reach out!