My 2022 Rebrand
For many years, I kept my personal branding to just an avatar of myself. It never stood out as professional and was hard to incorporate online. This meant:
- I couldn't scale it up or down (pixelation)
- It didn't look professional
- It looked off when placed on my projects
Branding
I'm extremely fussy with designs and logos for my online presence, so I knew from the start it needed to be done by someone with experience in professional-grade branding. I didn't want random shapes beside my name or anything that would have no association at a glance.
I had used IndieBrands countless times previously, including for my business (Octanna). After reaching out to one of the co-founders (David), I shared my vision. Within days he came back with a mockup. It was spot on, and I knew I wanted to go ahead with the final version.
Just under a week later, I was blown away by the result. It's clean, easy to understand, and I can use it everywhere without issues. I'd highly recommend them if you ever need any form of branding.
Website
My previous redesign only happened in November 2020, yet looking back, it was clunky, hard to use, and too overwhelming at a glance. People often wouldn't stay long.
The aim with my new website was to make it easy to know:
- What I do
- My projects
- My portfolio
- My skillset
- How to contact me
Moving to Next.js
After being a long-time Vue.js fan, building dashboards and landing pages with it, I always loved the appeal of React.js especially paired with Vercel. After diving into it for Analyse, I realised how fast and snappy it paired up while not being too hard for a beginner. Having experience with site optimisation and SEO, I knew a fast site was essential, and I needed this out of the box with little configuration.
Since deploying Analyse with Next.js, I knew my vision was to move other landing pages to it too. My personal site was next. I also struggled with the lack of syntax highlighting that my blog CMS at the time (Ghost) had - not a great experience for dev-focused content.
Tech Stack
For those who want to know:
- Next.js
- React.js
- Tailwind CSS
- Headless UI
- MDX (For markdown)
- Prism (Syntax highlighting)
New Blog System
After using Ghost CMS for a long time, I got frustrated with the lack of syntax highlighting, making it difficult to share code snippets. I heard about MDX and how it could be paired with Prism for complete syntax highlighting.
The result is fantastic - much easier to read and understand, all managed by me rather than separate solutions. I can now remove another droplet as Vercel manages this together.
That's All
Thanks for reading. Feel free to reach out on Twitter at @heychazza.