When I first moved into my current office a while back I remember having a very awkward chat. The owner of the building began talking to me quite randomly about all the renovations he had done since taking over the property. He spoke about things like putting in new lights, plastering the roof and painting the large wooden beams and I nodded. You see when I moved into that building it was just an empty office, it was something simple that could be transformed into something with purpose. To the landlord however the building had already been transformed, his work had been done and he was proud of his accomplishments.

It’s odd how we don’t appreciated things that serve their purpose.

It’s something I’ve come to realise in building this website. Building AlexanderSingleton.com has been an off and on project of mine for some 5-6 months now. Something that I can tinker with when I find myself with a (rare) spare hour. I’ve built it up from nothing and hit many hurdles on the way. I’ve had to get to grips with no less than four programming languages in it’s construction and I’m incredibly proud of it.

However in the end this is quite simply an entirely adequate website. It does nothing remarkable or revolutionary and provides no real function other than displaying a bit of text and a few images. To you, this may seem quite pretty but honestly unremarkable. Where as to me it symbolises a shining beacon of everything I’ve learned about web design so far in my career. I proud that the Facebook icon in the top right corner turns orange when you hover over it, and that the home page pulls content from various categories throughout the website. I’m proud to know every little nook and cranny and line of code that has gone into building this website.

I totally get how that landlord felt about the empty office now, and if you’re reading this and nodding along silently, I get that too. I suppose appreciating the simple alongside the marvellous is something I should try and remember to do from now on because even the simplest things are marvellous to the person that made them.