Stumbled upon the website of Paul Burgess while looking for inspiration for a project I’m working on. He’s a web designer from England who did Miss Aniela’s web site, among many others. I have become an instant fan of his work. His sites are visually pleasing (dare I say arresting), yet they are elegant, functional, and free of pointless window dressing. Unlike so much of the stuff you see on Smashing Magazine and places like that.
Most of his sites seem to be WordPress based, and he talks about making it easy for clients to update or add their own content, which is exactly how I imagine doing it — once I learn how. So much I need to learn both technically and artistically to be able to work in that way. But it is exciting to find a model or source of inspiration to keep me on track in my dreams of web design excellence.
Makes me think I ought to start studying WordPress right away and perhaps table the Javascript book I’ve been reading. I do totally want to learn Javascript, but it may not be quite as much on the critical path to where I’m going. I can probably just grab some free code if I need any Javascript enhancements, at least for the time being. But I really feel that learning WordPress, and designing with WordPress would open up a lot of possibilities.