How can more people have a beautiful site?

It might seem counterintuitive, but I've always felt iffy about presenting my services as the best and only way to get a website. I avoid this type of black or white thinking and communication because it feels inauthentic and unhelpful. I do think that having a website made by a professional or studio is the best choice for some people and businesses, but I'm not going to pretend it is for everyone.

Not everyone wants the same thing from a website, not everyone needs the best, most branded, most customized website for it to work for them, not everyone is at a point in their business / freelancing where they're ready to invest in their "perfect" website. But that doesn't mean you have to do it all alone.

In a way, my mission with web design is to make the internet more beautiful, personal and unique. And I can do that by designing websites for people for whom it is the right move, yes. But also by helping those for whom it might not be, to still be able to make a beautiful, personal and unique website.

How, though? I share about how I think about websites and web design — how a lived-in website is better than a perfect one, especially at the beginning, I also wrote about how to design for readibility... And I want to keep expanding these ideas and share much more. But that doesn't feel like enough.

After all, I am a designer. I also want to use design itself, just without it needing to be only through full, custom projects that not everyone is ready for. Designing for the beginning stages, for lower budgets, lower commitment, or designing simple solutions because some people don't need more than that, but they still need a place to start.

Templates are where my mind immediately goes. But templates can be so generic. You'd think they're the opposite of what makes the web unique and personal. But what if instead of a template, a cookie-cutter to adapt to, I create a starting point?

You know how when staring at a blank page, you can't seem to come up with anything? But then once you already have something, it's easier to mold it and build on top of it, and you might even end up with something completely different than what you started with.

That's what I want to design, that first "something". That, and the tools to help you shape it into something that's yours.

Not having a big budget doesn't mean you have figure it out all alone. Your project not "being there yet" doesn't mean you can't start sharing it now. Not having a custom website doesn't mean it can't feel like you. And not hiring a designer doesn't mean you have to build everything from scratch.