Jono's Blog

I finished the design & build of my new site last week. I saw it as an interactive business card of sorts - my personal details, a quick snapshot of my work and an introduction to me. In all, it took about 9 days (rather than my original plan of 7), which isn’t too bad considering I was working on other projects as well. I experimented with some new tricks, a luxury I don’t normally get on client projects because the support isn’t there yet. The concept began with this small sketch:

If you want to see the end result (although there is still lots of work that should still be done), you can skip right to the end of this post. For those interested in a potentially interesting lesson, read on. For some of you, it may seem obvious. For me, I didn’t see it at the time.

Looking at my original objective, I made some average decisions. I don’t mind admitting that, I think making quick decisions and going to action is what being “iterative” is all about. When this journey started just a few of weeks back, my instant reaction was to build a site focused on helping me replace my previous job. As I said, an interactive business card designed to gain me an introduction to further opportunity. I worked long hours to hit my own personal deadline, learnt a lot and honestly had a lot of fun doing it. None of this is wrong in itself. But it’s not quite right for me.

My decisions were too reactionary.

I made my decisions based on my instant natural reaction to my new situation. I allowed those decisions to shape my objectives for what to achieve next - build a site, then find a full time job. At the end of the process, something didn’t sit right with me. Admittedly, part of the reason was that my site was far from “perfect”. The original concept blossomed into something that certainly doesn’t create an optimal experience in every browser. However it was something else, something far more personal. Once I began to look beyond my immediate next step I started to see the clearer picture.

I’ve long desired for something greater. Everyday, I want to work on projects and ideas I am passionate about. That could be a client I truly believe in, a project I think is going to have true impact on people’s lives, an opportunity to learn something new or a chance to work with someone I admire, amoung other things. It’s easy to desire something. Actually chasing it is the hard part, because it often feels like a “one day” scenario, for sometime in the future. Something for the idealists. 

I’ve decided to make that scenario exist today. I’ve long planned to move to the US near the end of this year, and between now and then I will be using the time to work on projects I love, learn everything I can, and preparing for what is next over there.

Practically, what does it mean? I’m still figuring it all out, but it does means I’m going to be setting up my blog properly, sharing things I come across that inspire me, projects I find interesting, linking to great articles on interactive design and (hopefully) writing some of my own. I’ll be doing UX, UI and product design/consulting. I’ll be connecting with talented friends in the industry and meeting new people along the way. I’ll also be launching a larger, more complete website and better incoporate my blog.

It’s an exciting time.

Cutting to the Chase.

My website from now on will be found at http://jonom.com.

Here are some details:

• This is only temporary. I launched it anyway for many reasons, some of which you can read above.

• Use Safari or Chrome if you can. There are many small webkit only features I’ve experimented with, like 2D & 3D animations.

• The site works in Firefox, but is missing the animations. Thankfully they aren’t crucial to the usefulness of the site, they just add to the experience.

• Apologies if you use Internet Explorer :)

• I’m a firm believer that sites should all have a mobile version these days. I have not implemented one yet.

• I haven’t added a preloader so you might need to refresh to catch that small intro animation.

• I’ll be making some small tweaks, but most of my time will be dedicated to what is next.