Sometimes Function Follows Form
When I started to create this website, I told myself I would approach things differently than I had in the past. I told myself I would work on the content first and let the design come later. I told myself not to put form before function, again.
But I failed.
As I started building, I found myself focusing too much on aesthetics, as usual. I started to feel frustrated with myself. I asked myself “Why can’t I just write a bunch of content and then build a site around it? This is how more productive people do things, right?”
Then a thought popped into my head that never had in all the years I’ve been creating websites:
The form is inspiring.
I finally realized why I always got hung up on the visual presentation of my content when building sites rather than the quality or completeness of it. So I gave myself full permission to develop the inspiration before the copy and I eliminated my feelings of frustration entirely.
At the moment of writing this article, I've completed nearly all the design work for this site and I’m completely happy with the progress. Going forward, I’ll always remember try to remember 2 things:
- Inspiration is a great motivator.
- Resistance is helpful. It tells us to take a break and gain understanding.
The resistance I felt was the idea of trying to force myself to write a bunch of content first. My natural tendency was to focus on lots of little design touches and I had to stop and really think about what was happening to have a realization.