When I decided to build a personal website, I had no idea what to fill it with. I had never read any blogs before, and the only examples I had were Austin Kleon and Thomas Frank websites. I’ve found a lot of new sources of inspiration this year, and I want to share it with you.
I mentioned Austin Kleon in the first paragraph for a reason. His book «Show Your Work» made me sit down and make a plan to build a website immediately after reading. Try that.
Become a documentarian of what you do. Start a work journal: Write your thoughts down in a notebook, or speak them into an audio recorder. Keep a scrapbook. Take a lot of photographs of your work at different stages in your process. Shoot video of you working. This isn’t about making art, it’s about simply keeping track of what’s going on around you.
Whether you share it or not, documenting and recording your process as you go along has its own rewards: You’ll start to see the work you’re doing more clearly and feel like you’re making progress. And when you’re ready to share, you’ll have a surplus of material to choose from.
«Show your work» , Austin Kleon
The beauty of owning your own turf is that you can do whatever you want with it. Your domain name is your domain. You don’t have to make compromises.
«Show your work» , Austin Kleon
Especially I mention Thomas Frank for a reason too. This guy led me to current implementation of my website. He has a great article about building a personal website on one of his projects.
Who do I look up to now?
Here’s a list of blogs I’ve started following this year (they are russian, but you can check the design):
And here are personal website examples to be inspired by:
And an article on CollegeInfoGeek with personal website examples.