One of the most fun parts of writing this newsletter is getting to learn and embarrass myself in public.
Last week, for example, I made fun of 2012 Packy for making a website with buttons like this:
whereas 2020 Packy, after six years at a startup, with modern tools like Webflow and Figma at his disposal, makes buttons like this:
What I didn’t realize until Puja pointed it out is: they’re almost exactly the same. 🤦🏻♂️
I’ll probably never be a great designer, but luckily, over the past eight years, I’ve made some really talented friends. I asked one of them, Allegra, to look at a couple of color schemes I was playing with, and she came back with an incredible design concept —colors, fonts, site layout, and more — that she put together over her 30 minute lunch break. 🤯It’s better than anything I could have come up with if I spent every breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the next year on it. THANK YOU ALLEGRA!
So I took Allegra’s design and went back to Webflow to turn them into the Not Boring website. It’s definitely not perfect (because I’m still a Webflow novice), the mobile version is particularly hairy, and it’s still a work-in-progress, but I’m happy with the way it’s shaping up. Moving Not Boring out of packym.com and into its very own home feels like dropping my baby off at boarding school (or something, I’m not a parent, I don’t know how this works).
Learning in public is half the fun of this whole thing, both to show how unglamorous so much of this process is and to get feedback and input from people who are smarter and more talented than me. To that end, I’d love your thoughts, feedback, and tips.