My Tiny Home on the internet

Notes

Notes

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Dec 31, 2023

Dec 31, 2023

The story behind my personal website, the inspiration and driving forces that pushed me forward, and how I built my tiny home on the internet.

The story behind my personal website, the inspiration and driving forces that pushed me forward, and how I built my tiny home on the internet.

I am beyond excited to welcome you to my new Tiny Home on the internet. Over the last couple of months (and years) my Tiny Home on the internet did not get the attention it deserved. Therefore, it was time for a much needed renovation.

Since this might be the first time you discover me and my work, I want to take the opportunity and introduce myself. My name is Philipp and I am a Product Designer, Writer, and side-project enthusiast, who loves to read books, listen to podcasts, set myself creative challenges, but you will also find me hiking through Austria’s mountains, road-cycling, or building a new mechanical keyboard.

I built my first personal website, which was mainly my design portfolio, back in 2017. It was an incredible feeling to have my own website, with my own domain, and a dedicated space to present my work. The first iteration of my personal website was created with some basic HTML and CSS. After that, I used a combination of WordPress and Semplice, a portfolio tool based on WordPress. I found myself in a constant iteration loop, rebuilding and redesigning my website over and over again. Instead of focusing on creating and sharing content on my personal website, I invested plenty of time making it pixel-perfect, just to redesign certain elements after I stumbled across a new idea online.

In 2019, I fell in love with writing. Not only did I start writing and building Creativerly, my weekly newsletter about creativity and productivity-boosting tools and resources, I also started writing a personal blog where I shared insights into the process of building Creativerly and other side-projects. While I fell in love with writing, I also started to discover personal blogs by people I admired and was following online. I felt the desire to discover more digital homes, personal websites, and blogs of people I was already following online. It is pure joy to find someone‘s personal website, learn something about the person maintaining it, about the work and side-projects, and reading about the person‘s thoughts.

In most cases, designer portfolios follow a single use-case: to showcase your work and projects, which is legitimate. I was in the faith that when I wanted to apply for a job in the field of design, I need to have a polished portfolio, five projects, long-from case studies, using top-notch mockups to showcase features of the apps I have designed. But during my first job interviews, I realised that people who are looking to hire designers are not only interested in the work you have designed and your skills, they are interested in you, your hobbies, your passion projects, and the reason you are sticking to those projects. Your personal website, your portfolio, your internet home should reflect that. Personal websites should be peoples' playgrounds. They should be a space where you can have fun, experiment with the design, but also with the things you would like to show off.

You love reading books? Awesome, why not create an open library on your website to showcase your favorite books or the books you would like to read? You are a podcast lover? Lovely, why not share or embed a public playlist of your favorite podcast episodes and a short text to inform visitors about why you think those are great podcast episodes? There are so much possibilities to turn your website into a personal playground, your personal internet space, your own tiny home on the internet.

There are loads of folks who are leading the way. I got especially inspired by people like Noah Busher, who shares some of the photos he took on his website, Kyle Lambert, who has a dedicated “Side project fun” section on his homepage, Robin Spielmann, who leverages Raindrops API to share his bookmarks on his website, Chester How, who found the perfect balance of showcasing projects, writings, books, and hobbies, or Brian Lovin, who has a personal website which almost feels like an app every visitor can engage with. Beside that, Matthias Ott and his lovely post Into the Personal-Website-Verse has been the driving and leading force when it comes to the creation of my own personal website. Matthias published this post back in 2019, the year during which social media started to change drastically, for the worse. Fast-forward to today, and social networks are as disrupted as they never were. People have spread across different platforms. After the Twitter meltdown, I quickly found a new home on Mastodon. Nevertheless, I felt the urge to get back to my personal website, and publish my thoughts and ideas there. As Matthias wrote in one of his notes, I wanted to make 2023 the of my personal website too, rebuilding and getting it ready to become my personal home on the internet.

But things did not turn out as planned, life and work took over, and I just spent a couple hours on and off designing and building my personal website. After the Christmas holidays, heading from one family event to another, I found myself with two full days right before New Year’s Eve, with no plans, and no events. While 2023 has been exhausting, I could feel a little energy spark in my body. It was enough to sit down, take my MacBook, and finish my new personal website. It was time, and I had to take the chance of being able to dedicate two full days to wrap up this project.

I made it.

The newest iteration of my personal website, my little corner, my tiny home on the internet is live. I am ready to make 2024 the year of the personal website again. I encourage everyone to join me and have fun while building a digital playground on the web. What I love about personal websites is the fact that they always provide some sort of insights and information, which is incredible fun to discover. You get the chance to discover new work, projects, side-projects, links to apps or tools, tiny and personal blogs, publications, other websites, and a lot more.

It is time to build or update your personal website. Make it personal, fun, creative.

As Anil Dash states in his recent post The Internet is About to Get Weird Again for Rolling Stone:

There should be lots of different, human-scale alternative experiences on the internet that offer up home-cooked, locally-grown, ethically-sourced, code-to-table alternatives to the factory-farmed junk food of the internet. And they should be weird.

Thank you for your visit, thank you for reading. If you want to stay up-to-date about my writings, projects, what I am reading or listening to, or if you are interested in receiving a selection of interesting links to articles, sites, tools, and more, make sure to check out my personal newsletter, Datest, which I write casually.

Philipp Temmel

© 2024

I do not collect or store any kind of cookies on this website. You can learn more about this heading to the Legal Notice & Data Privacy page

Philipp Temmel

© 2024

I do not collect or store any kind of cookies on this website. You can learn more about this

heading to the Legal Notice & Data Privacy page

Philipp Temmel

© 2024

I do not collect or store any kind of cookies on this website. You can learn more about this

heading to the Legal Notice & Data Privacy page