I have spent some time to figure out what present I could give to myself for my birthday on Saturday, August 29th. I had been working lately on this design refresh of my home page. So I thought that it could be a cool present from me to myself.

Well, I was a bit tired of the current design (by the way, it’s still available on http://bastienlabelle.fr/v1/), I was thinking that there was not enough contrast, I didn’t like the colors or the way font is displayed anymore.

bastienlabelle_v1

Still following the KISS principle, I wanted to realize something cleaner than it was (and believe me, it was not an easy thing). So I started reducing the visible text. Then, as I mentioned above, I was sick of the contrast. I have done the contrary of the first design. Before it was grey on black, and now it’s grey on white. It was not black vs white, because black on white or the opposite really hurt my eyes.

I was also kind of tired of Helvetica. So I figured out Arial might be cleaner if I reduced the text size. Actually, I should have thought about reducing the font size before, because Helvetica and Arial feel kind of the same at this size.

Last point, I wanted to break conventions, do something different. I like space, minimalism, clean things, Northern Europe architecture style. But all these things are conventionnal. So I thought maybe having the whole content starting from the bottom might be a cool idea, like it could be on a 80′s swiss style print ad. At first, it may be kind of shocking, but I think we get used to it really quickly.

Then I figured out it was ready to go live. And it looks like this:

Bastien Labelle

Like I did with the old one, I may certainly iterate on that design, so if you have any ideas about how to improve this new design, comments are welcome.

I have been teasing some friends about it, and there are very different opinions. Well, I guess I just can’t please everyone.

PS: I don’t feel like I’m a real rockstar, but hey, I couldn’t find a good easter egg with the word “ninja”.