Meandering Thoughts on Blogging

Over the course of 2019 I slowly picked away at redesigning yewknee.com. Twenty minutes here and there plucking away at markup, styles and backend configuration. If you're reading via RSS, come check it out. I'm happy with the results but wanted to give a little insight on why the change in format.

I've been running this site since 2001 and a lot has changed in terms of the "blog" landscape in that time. Once upon time, you had a slew of bookmarks or a robust group of RSS feeds to help facilitate finding something interesting to look at. This site has always served as a repository of my findings along the way, hoping that others had shared interest. With the rise of Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, podcasts, apps, games, etc - the traditional blog has become less necessary. I'm not implying they are obsolete, I'm just saying they require a little more effort to keep up with in 2019 than they did two decades ago.

I've always admired the likes of Waxy, Kottke, Anil Dash, Daring Fireball, Austin Kleon and Frank Chimero for their ability to document parts of the web, then frame it, augment it and eloquently contextualize it into something bigger yet still keep it personal. My site has never been that. That's not pessimism or self-deprecation talking, that's just not what I do here. Unsurprisingly, I get a lot of my updates from all of them via Twitter now.

Furthermore, I love peeking in on the works of (version) industries, Mark Weaver, Will Bryant and Caroline Bowman - they're consistently providing inspiring design styles and execution techniques. Here again, I get my fill from all of them via Instagram these days.

In addition to all that, I really don't find myself with near as much time these days as I used to. I have a full-time job at Vimeo and I try to consistently post updates for my little indie label, yk records, and my podcast network project We Own This Town. Striving to write 2-3 blog posts a day on top of all that has proven to be difficult at best.

So, taking all that into account, here we are with Version 11 of this site. It's a single feed of distractions culled from my day-to-day experiences around the web. It largely consists of three post "types" - a regular blog entry like this one, a Quicklink that points to some website / YouTube video or a Favorited Tweet from @yewknee. Hopefully the tweets don't get overbearing but that's where I see the most of the web, so I suspect there will be plenty.

I'm certainly not quitting this site, I'm just attempting to evolve it a bit. The Internet is a different place now than it was in 2001 and this site should be too. I've got plans to write some longer form content (even if it's not up to the bar of those aforementioned) and I'll continue to post about inspiring projects, designs and images I encounter. As we head into 2020 it was time for something different. I hope you like it.