How Is This Site Made?

Originally published on , last updated on .

A brief history

I picked up the domain name brandonmorrison.com sometime in 2003 or 2004 to create my first portfolio site. Over the years, it's been a static html site, a Drupal site, a Wordpress site, a Nuxt.js site, and even briefly forwarded to a Medium.com account.

In every iteration, this has been a place to tinker with some web experiment. It's sometimes a portfolio, sometimes a temperamental toy, and sometimes a worry stone.

Design

Hatch Poster of Johnny Cash
Credit: Hatch Show Prints

I grew up near and currently live in Nashville, Tennessee, and studied Media Design in college at a nearby school. A big part of the vibe here is music, and a big part of the visual language around said music is letterpressed concert posters.

I love the look and feel of the work out of Hatch Show Prints, which has driven the visuals for letterpress prints with bold colors and overlays that pop so well. Given how much this style is driven by inks letting colors blend in beneath, it's challenging to get it to work well in CSS, but it's fun to try!

Homepage

The homepage is a collection of little visual experiments that a reader can swipe between. These rarely get updated, but I enjoy having a welcome mat on my site that is less about me and more of a tinker toy.

Thoughts and Scribblings

I have two sections on the site for writings: Thoughts and Scribblings. Pieces that I want to live for a longer period of time go into Thoughts, while more ephemeral items go into Scribblings. Pieces in Thoughts should be work that takes more effort to write or make, and has the ability to evolve as needed. Scribblings are temporary, and will fall of the site after some period of time.

I've recently added an RSS feed for the Scribbles section.

I picked up the idea for non-dated, long-running reference content from an earlier version of Steve Smith's personal site Ordered List.

Tech

The current iteration of the site is pretty basic, but fits in line with a philosophy of not wanting the tech to get in the way of creating something.