My name is Matt Policastro. I am a designer. This is my website. I'm fairly certain I've made other "hello world" posts elsewhere, it only seemed right for my new, self-hosted blog. It also only seemed right to talk about how this all came about, and what's coming next. Shall we?

Origins

I began in print design at The College of Wooster. As a student I was involved in all kinds of activities and groups and sort of landed into the role of making posters and printed materials. That said, I was also a huge geek and had always dabbled with computers and the web. That dabbling finally reached critical mass in October of 2013.

Working as a freelancer, I was awash in terrible websites and uneven online presences. Burdened with a sense of insufferable curiousity and the print designer's obsession with control, I threw myself to the web to learn as much as I could. And I found beautiful things. With the guidance of brilliant writers, podcasters, and designers, I realised I needed to build something of my own.

And now — after myriad prototypes, landing pages, and experiments — I have this. Welcome.

The Site Itself

Everything was written in Coda 2 and Byword using Kirby as the CMS and Bourbon/Bourbon Neat/Bourbon Bitters by thoughtbot for Sass/CSS writing.

Everything on the site is built mobile-first and fully-responsive. Though the site is certainly still a rough draft, what you see today is the foundation for everything I do moving forward. This site functions as my home on the web, and I can't wait to show you all what I have planned. Luckily, I can tell you about some of it.

Coming Soon

As mentioned above, some things are still in rough shape, while others are missing altogether. Here's some of the things I have planned for the near future:

  • Standards-compliant HTML. Even though I'm a young designer still learning the ropes of code, I plan on keeping things as accessible and up-to-date with the latest and greatest.
  • Open-sourced code. I'm glad to share any tricks or tools I create in the process of building and maintaining the site. On the other hand, I'm still figuring out how git works.
  • CSS transitions and animations. CSS is an amazing tool, and it only gets more powerful with things like Sass. Expect things to get an awful lot fancier in the near future.
  • Portfolio. And but of course, my actual portfolio. This site is my home online, and I've love to show off my work. But only when it's as beautiful as it can be.

Colophon

Despite the many, many missteps I've taken on the road to the site you see, I'm really quite proud of what you see. And it's only going to get better.

Talk again soon.

– Matt