About this site
Behind the scenes
About my process.
This website is, like many designer’s websites, a perpetual experiment. I’m
building it from scratch, writing it line-by-line in HTML, CSS, and Javascript, and hosting it on Github
Pages with a custom domain name. I built a few components in React, too-- before I learned I can’t
integrate them on a page already structured in HTML. Whoops!
That's the pleasure and the pain of the learning process. I’m trained in the arts, so aesthetic critical
inquiry is my bread and butter. I’m a big believer that a craftsperson shouldn’t use shortcuts when it
comes to their practice unless they thoroughly understand what those shortcuts do, and how. I’ve
harnessed internet platforms to host my artwork since I was a child, and eventually took up UI/UX design
because of that attention to form. I really care about websites: I believe in rigorous consideration of
websites as a context with real social and political impact. Why follow a standard just because it’s the
standard? What does it mean to present myself via someone else’s product?
So when I explored no-code portfolio builders like Webflow or Framer, I struggled with the reduced
measure of control. Even though abstraction was reduced, I wasn’t satisfied. What was I missing by
relying on a third party vendor? What if the GUI of no-code editors and template builders obfuscates
something new and different a website could do?
That’s a lot of questions and no answers all in a row. I’m trying to answer these questions for myself
by getting down to brass tacks and learning to code from the bottom up. I’m still new to this, and as I
practice, I’m learning code organization, syntax, and accessibility; I’m becoming accustomed to the many
new languages, frameworks, infrastructure and data structures that govern digital life. With each
update, I'm learning something new about design, development, and the internet itself. You might
encounter a few inconsistencies: that will change. Stay tuned as beszi.world evolves.
