Questioning stagnation
When you’ve effectively been out of work for over half a year due to being placed on leave, at some point you start questioning whether you should be doing something. Anything that isn’t gaming or binge-watching.
Before I actively started reviving and redesigning this blog, I began familiarizing myself with the programs in the Adobe Creative Cloud. Black Friday also allowed me to pick up online courses at a very reasonable price.
Learning with obstacles
The urge to create my own graphics had been there for a long time. I still remember my last blog design—it was painfully colorful. This time, I wanted more. So I dove deep into programs like After Effects and Illustrator.
The problem with online courses, though, is often that they either race through the content like they’ve been stung by a tarantula, or they’re so slow you start nodding off.
Of course, instructors can’t please everyone. But for me it’s difficult to follow new material when the explanation pace is so fast that you have to hit pause every two seconds. That seriously limits my learning effect.
Still, I kept going and learned quite a bit in After Effects—like how to create animated backgrounds for websites that aren’t huge in file size. Or small Instagram videos. Anyone who follows me on Instagram probably saw the two small, admittedly very simple, videos at the end of December.
Application and limits
I also implemented the background animations, but they only fit into my planned design to a limited extent. That’s why there are only a few pages where the background is lightly animated.
But here are a few video examples:
Playlist
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All videos are self-hosted. No data is transferred to external video platforms.
Unfortunately, these backgrounds don’t work optimally because they make the mobile version of the design more complicated. And let’s be honest: almost all of you use the site on mobile.
People who work extensively with Adobe products will probably smile at this. I don’t care. I’m a little proud of how the new design turned out—and of the videos too, even if I can’t really use them directly.
Self-acquired knowledge
In the end, I’m proud of what I taught myself—whether through courses, independent research, or with the help of AI. AI in the sense that it shows me how things work that I already have in my head.
At the time I wrote this text, I took a short break from learning because I had to focus on writing. We’ll see—maybe I’ll pick it up more intensively again in the new year.
Gerry