On personal projects, and overcoming fear

I'm currently working on creating my personal site, and wanted to write a bit about what I'm trying to do and why it's taken me so long ;)

A Web Designer, with no website?

Uhh, I'm working on it...

Firstly, I'll get the thing I feel sort of embarrassed about out of the way - and that's the fact that I don't currently have "my own website". Despite being a professional web designer, and writing html & css (on and off) for something like 10 years now. I guess one reason for that is, I've been working in-house at a company for a long time, and before that, at an agency, so I've never been freelance and needed a website for marketing purposes or anything.

Maybe it even sounds like I'm not creative, or "into coding" enough, by not producing my own website yet. I mean, I used to have my own site a long time ago - but to be honest that was before I did web design for a living and more importantly, before the perfectionist in me really came out.

Truth is, although I focus on front-end development as opposed to design in my day-to-day job these days (though I love both, and to me they go hand in hand when it comes to websites), I am a very creative person. And I also love coding/html/css. So why aren't I making my own stuff more?

Well, I've been trying to figure that out a lot lately, and explored a lot about myself in the process, and I think I'm getting to understand the hurdles I face and work to overcome them. Truth is, I'm 99.9% a perfectionist. In reality, I'd like to be about 80% a perfectionist. Sure, perfectionism is a good thing in some ways, I take absolute pride and care for everything I work on, no matter who it's for, or how minute or big the task. I'm a sucker for detail, typos, a pixel being out here, the grey not being the right shade. And I'm glad. But, on the other hand, it's given me this attitude that if I create stuff, it needs to be amazing. If not, what's the point?

As well as webby stuff, I enjoy drawing a lot too, and I go through a very similar thing with my art. I might make a picture I'm happy with, but if the next one isn't quite as good, I feel like I've just wasted time, and/or it ends up making me feel sad. When that happens I feel like I sort of "rebel" from my creativity and end up thinking I'm not good enough and I should just not bother drawing really.

So back to the subject of website making. I don't really suffer the worries or being held back when I'm designing or coding at work. It's a LOT easier with client work. I have a deadline, therefore I do the best I can in that time, and if things can be improved, well it's easier to rest with that knowledge. Another of my traits is I will absolutely never miss a deadline, and I will never let people down. I once opened a fortune cookie that said "the greatest inspiration is the deadline". I don't see how that's actually a fortune but.. XD I kept that on my desk for a while, it is absolutely true for me.

And, I absolutely love what I do, completely. One of my biggest aims in life, if not my biggest, is becoming better at using web technologies and design to create awesome user experiences. To become really really REALLY good.

And the issue right now, the thing that's been holding me back on personal projects and making a site that represents ME, is, I know I'm not as good as I want to be. And, it can be scary, and disappointing. I've never had it summed up better, than when I watched this clip of Ira Glass talking about creativity.

"All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you."

When I first heard this, it was like something became completely clear for me. I'm not disappointed because I suck. I'm disappointed because my work isn't killer.

A small fish in a big pond

Photo by protographer23

I compare myself way too much, in life in general, to others, and judge my achievements by the achievements of others. Again, I don't think this is terrible - all humans have amazing potential, and it's really up to us how we use it and hone it. I'm glad I want to aim high. But, it feels hard sometimes when the internet is this big pond of people who you can compare yourself against. I'm a fairly quiet/not particularly confident or social person, who likes peace and quiet, cups of tea and the countryside, and detests the idea of things like parties or going out or having to speak to random people. When I lived and worked where I grew up, I thought I was pretty good, y'know? When I was at college, compared to others, I was pretty damn good at html and css, and making sites. And also at having a decent design taste, and to be honest, I didn't see a lot of good design when I was at college. That's nothing against others, I wasn't doing a design course as such at the time, so I didn't really expect to.

Then I worked in London, and when I was working as a Graphic Designer I went through a lot of times when I thought, wow I probably suck compared to the amount of "proper graphic design students" in London. In all honesty, although I worked as a Graphic Designer (web and print) for four years, I don't have a design qualification as such, I've just always had an eye for it. There was a time when the company I worked at was trying to hire another designer to work alongside me, and we got so many amazing sounding CVs handed in, I was actually nervous that these people would show me up for the "unqualified" designer I was. But, in a lot of these cases, the work these people did, didn't live up to the sound of those qualifications. Again I'm not trying to put other people down, but I'm just saying, when you're comparing yourself based on things like this - things aren't always as you might imagine. And when I did work alongside other designers, I found that we both had our own techniques and tips, and could learn things from each other.

But my point is, whilst I still find London a little bit scary, it's nothing compared to THE ENTIRE INTERNET. Making my website means I'm defining myself on the internet. I'm saying "This is me and these are my design and website making abilities". And, I have to live with that they are how they are right now, and there are going to be sites I think are way more amazing, but, that's OKAY. I'm sure there's a lot of sites not as well coded or nice looking as mine - everyone has their place in the pond, but, I'm always focusing on "better" things, because I want to be that good. Again, it's a good and bad thing.

Maybe it's odd that while I'm trying to focus on front end development in my career, I really can't stop thinking about design. As I said earlier on, they really go hand in hand to me. If you design something for the web, you need to understand how that will work, how it will be built. When you get to thinking about interactions and fancy jquery stuff, well you're often thinking of how it might appear, where it would go, but how you would write that too. I know design and development are often split, particularly at bigger organisations, but I guess personally, I like being able to do a bit of both - they both go into crafting a great user experience.

So I guess the main problem I have when attempting to start my own website is designing it, and deciding on a design that I like and am still happy with two days later. Too often I've spent a few days in Photoshop trying to make it look *just* how I want and then shoehorning some content in later and finding out it doesn't work that well. That's also a problem from me not thinking of my "brief" or at least plan for what I'm actually trying to do with my site before just jumping in and designing it.

Other than design, there's the problem that I want to make every bit of this site better than I've done before - the html, the css, the design, implementing some djangoness.

So, this time I have a plan, and I'm also aiming for an 80% good website, not 99.9%. Here's my plan, not just for my website, but for how I'm going to fight that "personal creative block/scaredycatness".

The plan

No more Scaredy cat!! Photo by rockbandit

Start with the content.
I failed on this last time by jumping into Photoshop right away. Focusing on content first, will not only make it easier to get the design to work with it, having real stuff to style etc, but also, I can't get held up being perfectionistic over some design, content, I can just WRITE. Plus it means there's something there, and once you've made a start with *something* it's easier than a blank canvas.

Focus on making each small chunk amazing.
The good thing about this site is - I don't have a deadline! But I do want to make consistent progress, and I want to make sure I'm not just coding "how I know now" but I'm coding better, using more aspects of HTML5 that I maybe haven't used yet, making my site more responsive or bulletproof. So, I'm choosing to spend a couple of days on a chunk, like, coding the entire markup with HTML5 tags, and not just using them but understanding when and why to use them, using some I've maybe not used yet.

Create *something* and move on.
No deadline means I'm likely to get caught up on details. I've already spent ages trying to choose the perfect font before putting the rest of my content in, I can't help it in a way. But I need to do something, accept it, and move on, remembering I can always improve it later. Again, improving something is easier if you have something there to improve.

Don't compare to others, learn from them.
There are various talented web designers and developers I admire, and being scared or sad due to me not being as good as them is just stupid, and a waste of time. It's a great thing I have people to admire and inspire me, if I didn't, what would I aspire to? I have the benefit of seeing their work, reading their books, and learning from them, and that's a great thing.

Some of the books I'm enjoying, and learning from right now

Relax, and enjoy it.
I pressure myself sometimes, but at the end of the day, I'm doing this because I love it and because of the "killer taste" that Ira Glass spoke of. There's no point to any of it, if it makes me feel bad, so I need to keep having fun and remembering why I'm doing it :)

So that's about it. And so far, it's going quite well. I've spent a good chunk of time focusing on HTML5 for my markup, then moved to learning Sass as I write my CSS, and also focusing on small things I want to improve, like using relative font sizing. I want to do this well, but I also want to get my site DONE, so I can just use it as a playground, improve it, and make more projects. So I probably need to set myself more deadlines but.. we'll see how it goes. ;) Thanks for reading.