It’s been two years since this website underwent its last major redesign. It was 2023 and also the year I started doing photoshoots for myself. I had nowhere to put them, and I didn’t want to just pick four out of several hundred photos to post on my social media, so I figured using them in my website. And I have done so ever since. Now we arrive at the version 5 of the new website.
If you are just interested in the changelog, you may skip to version 5.
Quick timeline
Version 1
The first iteration of this website was made when I was still a college student in 2018. I was a mere 19 years old and almost clueless about things like CI/CD or static site generation. But I knew I wanted a well-designed website, and the designs I had in mind was eccentric, I would say. It was a simple set of Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) pages I wrote by hand and hosted on Github Pages.
Version 2
During the pandemic in 2020, I launched a new website. This was during a time I was looking for a new job because being a teacher made me physically sick and I wanted to jump to corporate. If you will notice, the design language for this new website was brutalist and highly geometric. This was also the first time I used my photo in my website. And (spoiler), I guess this design language has never left me because this new website still draws heavily from that version. I had not revisited this old website in years until this website redesign was finished and I am now writing about it. That this new design refresh looks very similar to version 2 is by mere happenstance. Fascinating how this happened.
What if this was a website?
Version 3
The next iteration comes in around 2021. Compared to the previous two, this is an incremental change to the 2nd version. I introduced shadows and depths to the design, and leaned more heavily into the imagery of it all. Apart from Inter, which I solely used in the previous design, I also used Maragsá, a beautiful Pinoy-inspired font made by Jad Maza, a designer from Iloilo. Around this time, I also developed the philosophy of not using JavaScript when not needed. The entire site had a simple design to accommodate for my (limited) knowledge of CSS at the time.
Version 4
The fourth version of this website comes at around 2022, around the time I started working for DICE205. They had asked me for a photo to put in my ID, but I was feeling extra, so instead of going to a local ID picture shop (which are ubiquitous here in the Philippines), I went to get a shoot with Great Image. This is the first time I started designing around photography, instead of designing first and then sprinkling graphics here and there.
Version 4.1
The next year, in 2023, I released
version 4.1. It’s an x.1
version because it was not a major redesign. Rather, it’s just an
enhancement on top of the existing version. I did away with the ID
picture and used a new set of photos I got from
another photoshoot
I did that year. This time I utilized the power of the
<picture> element to swap different images
depending on the screen size. This was the first design that I truly
felt like I have successfully translated my artistic vision onto a
final product.
Version 4.2
Then we get to version 4.2. This was also in 2023, but it was done in honor of Pride Month 2023. I had planned to attend the Pride March, and I wanted to do a photoshoot on what I would eventually wear to the protest. This is a 4.x version because again, it was not a very significant redesign. Most of the effort went into the hero banner that now features imagery from that photoshoot and featuring the Baybayin, a script used by Filipinos before colonization. This was in line with the theme of the photoshoot honoring the ancient feminine.
Version 4.3
Finally, we get to version 4.3 in 2024. The last version before this new one. I consider this the peaking point of this design language I developed since version 4. Like v4.2, it was a mere change in images, but I also added some new banners here and there. At this point, I felt like the design language was starting to become stale. Moreover, it no longer felt like it accurately represented who I am at the present. This will be the last iteration of the version 4 series.
Version 5
By the time you are reading this, the website has gone yet another redesign. This is one of the iterations I am most proud of just because of how much I stuck to the vision I had, not caring about how weird it gets (as I usually do). I did an interview and sat down with myself to talk to myself about the process. I know, it’s weird. But that’s the whole point!