26th December, 2014
Well then, for this inaugural blog post on a shoemaker's website the subject won't be about shoes - that's because I haven't been making any thanks to this site. Until I can get back on mission I'll give a brief run down of the thinking behind the website, how it's progressed and how it'll continue to develop.
It's worth considering that I'm not much of a coding whizz-kid - the last thing I programmed was a VideoPlus+ (dissapointingly irrelevent training) and I didn't fall into a hand craft like this by accident (I've never spent a days work in front of a computer screen until this side project and as enjoyable as the process has been, I'm quite glad to shoemaker). Learning something new and testing my new skills out is right up my street though; so with a substantially weighty copy of Head First HTML in hand I opened up TextEdit and finally got my money's worth for all those previously unused keys on the keyboard.
Building a website, it turns out, isn't a million miles away from making a shoe. You need to have a decent idea of what you want to end up with, figure out how to best prepare the elements that will form it's structure, and be fluid enough to adapt to changes along the way when things aren't possible or just don't work in the way you thought they would. With both, as is true in all craft, what's been attempted and taken out is just as important as what you've been able to put in.
I decided to at least try to build this website myself, partly to satisfy my rather particular nature, also so that I could learn how to update and adapt it along the way, it's just the way I am - I enjoy learning new things and pushing back my limitations, and I'm a like to exercise quite a strict creative control over these things. In that regard I think I've been successful, I didn't know anything HTML or CSS last week - this week I know a little bit. I knew I'd be more comfortable with the design side of things, and I had a good idea of what I wanted to achieve. I purposely went against an artificially slick, corporate look that wouldn't reflect who I am or what I do and tried to achieve a pared back and hand crafted feel, like a sketch to visualise a commission, to reflect the nature of my craft and (when they're ready) let the image galleries of shoes stand out against the plain interface. Hopefully that's what comes across rather than just looking a bit amateurish; my BA Fine Art was a long time ago, but it was fun to dust off the good pencils and draught all the different elements on the screen, and I'll take an opportunity to work with my hands rather than Photoshop every time.
It's been an exercise in organisation but the basic framework is pretty much there for now I suppose, the next stage will be to get all the content where it should be and generally refine what I gather is referred to as the "user experience". I can be an awful tinkerer if I think something can be improved though, so I'll have to force the computer to one side for a while and get back in the swing of things that are more planted in the real world.
I've got shoes to make.
Nicholas