i made a new homepage!

a redesign was long overdue

Since the beginning I never knew what to do on the homepage.
The very first page people will see when they come to my website.
Heck, I still don’t even know how to describe my website; how will I be able to leave a proper first impression?

The original idea of this website was to create a digital temple, hence I always imagined an animation of a door with some sort of a welcome sign opening and inviting the visitor into the space. I never intended to make my name/face/identity the main brand. I wanted to create a communal place for people to get inspired and gather, and make it less about me.

I left the image above as a placeholder for a long while, until a better idea came. I asked myself many times whether I didn’t want to show more of myself / my work, because of shyness or shame.
Maybe I wasn’t ready? Maybe it wasn’t time yet?

But to be very simple about it: I never received the impulse to change anything, until now.

The creative process is a mysterious, intuitive-led process for me, that rarely makes sense to my mind.

As a sacral authority in Human Design, I navigate life by following my visceral gut response. If there’s no spark behind an idea, it’s quite impossible for me to execute anything.

So, when the call came a few days ago, I didn’t hesitate and jumped right into action.

first iteration on figma

I miss the sound of the ocean and how nourishing the water feels to my body and soul. I think a lot about how to weave the natural world into the digital.
How many different forms and shapes this symbiosis can take.

I remembered doing a drone shooting session a few years back on Madeira, and immediately found a section in the picture with a wave transition offering a beautiful gradient from beige to turquoise.
Beige has been the base color of my color palette for many years and I love to combine it with other natural colors.

I chose a handstand picture, because my happiest moments are on my hands.

I have rewritten the about-text a million times in the past and the latest version is most of the time the one where I gave up trying to iterate once more.

How can something as limiting as words ever capture the essence of a human being?

Interestingly enough, there always come a time where the result finally feels somewhat satisfying.

adaptation to the website

I copied the Figma design into the AI chat and spent an hour tweaking font sizes, paddings, responsiveness and complaining about redundant code. I can’t stop feeling torn between gratitude and annoyance about AI usage, since AI-made websites are so obvious to spot. Which is probably why I can’t stop making changes until it feels like I have breathed my soul into the code and own the end result, even though the initial setup was not coded by me.

I changed the background image for a section without a wave transition to eliminate the noise. Also removed the background from the handstand image, which leads to an overall cleaner page.

I’m very pleased with the colors! They feel elemental, yet intriguing.

So curious about how this page will expand in the future.