When I left school in the early 1990’s I wanted to be an architect, but the acquisition of a drum kit and many hours of daily practice later, that career path had been altered to graphic designer. At this time computers were a thing, but they were not a part of the day to day job of a graphic designer at least not in a resource strapped college in a working class town. The tools of choice were sketchbooks, pens, pencils glue and mixed media. The drum kit got in the way of the graphic design career because it turns out I was half decent drummer but the designer never left me. Around 1999 I wanted to build a website for the band I was in and that was the inception of my tech career. There was however, one issue. I didn’t know anything about computers but for an autodidact like myself, I taught myself. Drumming didn’t pay a lot (even with a record deal) so I worked a rather cushy data-entry office job around university and when I got home, I glued myself to the family computer until the early hours learning (and drinking because I was a rock start in training). It was all very magical.
I was a web designer, until I wasn’t.
By 2004 I’d landed my first professional web design job and I’d stopped playing the drums “so I could get a real job, Lebowski”. When I wasn’t socialising I was at a computer and by this period I’d become an “ok” web developer. I started with Perl, got into ActionScript, JavaScript, PHP before eventually finding Django and Python at d.constuct 2006. Django was the perfect tool at the perfect time. My designer brain loved (and still does) the Django templating engine as it allowed me to design websites quickly and joyfully which I did up until around 2012.
But around sometime in 2012 I noticed something. I was getting slower and less confident in my designs. I didn’t notice at first as my programming skills were getting stronger. Everytime a design came in, my business partner designed it and I transformed it into a functional deployed Django application. The final thing I actually designed was a version of this website back in 2012 and it wasn’t long after that I came to the realisation that my creative well was dry. I tried for a few years after and nothing happened. The well was actually dry. Thankfully though I’d spent a solid five years inside of Django and I knew it inside out and I’d also kept up to date with CSS and made the transition from fixed pixel based design to responsive design. I’d basically turned myself into a full-stack engineer, capable of deploying and managing servers. I called myself a “des-devop-oler” which sadly, as a phrase, never took hold. Shame as it’s a tonne of fun to say.
What I could no longer call myself however, was a web designer, because I wasn’t.
The well was dry.
The well has some water again.
In early 2025 I threw up a tailwind plus theme on Vercel, made some edits and pointed jamiecurle.com at it. I was never happy with it. It felt like it wasn’t mine. I didn’t design it and there’s something about personal websites that need to feel “personally made”1. It was out of necessity2 I came to realise I needed a new personal website, mainly with a blog and some other things so that I had a “content” engine of my own to feed the personal branding beasts that are LinkedIn and the online socials.
I thought it was going to be a slog to redesign this site, but it hasn’t. Quite the opposite it’s been energising. Everything I used to feel when I designed back in the day is back. The butterflies when a given typography juxtaposes itself against the perfect background colour – back. The adrenaline when the grid starts to make it’s rhythm clear – back. The days sat at desk pushing pixels in a mockup and transferring it into CSS – it’s all back or at least enough to birth this website again. I’ve no doubt it will run dry again. There’s no way I’m hawking the precious resource out for client work, I’m saving it all for myself because I’m going to need it.
Ride along with me
As I write this it is 5th May 2026 9:47am and I’ve spent four days trying to smash out a version that’s “good enough” so that I point jamiecurle.com at it. I was hoping that I’d be there but I’m not. Here’s the two main pages.
The archive
The view post page
I honestly thought I was done last night, but when I moved a post over from one of my abandoned substacks, I realised the work had just begun. So this morning I set about moving pixels around again and thought I’d capture the progress as I went. I’m going to be doing some each day and there’s every chance that each day won’t be an improvement on the previous, but that’s how I design things. Move a few things, see what works, see what sucks, take a few moments to reflect and go again.
I’m the second type of web designer, my well runs dry when too many buckets of creative expression come out so I hope I make it to the end on time.