The cobbler’s children have no shoes. It’s a cliché because it’s true. Creative people are notoriously bad at applying their own skills to themselves. There’s always a client project that’s more urgent, a deadline that matters more, a reason to push the portfolio update to next month.
I finally ran out of excuses. Here’s what building my own site actually looked like.
The Brief
Writing a brief for yourself is harder than it sounds. With a client you ask questions. You push back. You draw out what they mean when they say they want something that “feels premium” or “tells our story.” When you’re the client, you skip straight to the keyboard and wonder why nothing feels right three hours later.
I started by writing out what the site needed to communicate before I opened a design file. A few things were non-negotiable: the work is part-time, intentionally small, referral-only by design. Not because I can’t take on more, but because the clients I work best with tend to find me through someone they already trust.
The site couldn’t oversell it. No stock photos of boardrooms. No inflated capability lists. Just an honest look at what the work is, who it’s for, and what it feels like to hire someone who treats your project like it’s the only one on their desk.
Designing the System
I started with color. The palette is dark by design—most of the site lives on near-black backgrounds, lifted by a progression of cooler blues and grays. I wanted something that felt considered rather than default, restrained rather than trendy.
Three typefaces, each with a specific job: a modern geometric for headings, a readable serif for body copy, and a monospaced font for the small labels and metadata that frame the content. Nothing decorative. Everything functional.
The custom cursor—a small dot that shifts in size and color based on what you’re hovering—was the last thing I added and the first thing most people mention. Sometimes the smallest detail does the most work.
The Build
Most of the sites I’ve built for clients have lived on platforms—WordPress, Squarespace, Webflow. Those tools are the right call for most projects: they’re fast to stand up, easy for clients to maintain, and I know them well.
My new full-time job is a different environment. We work in code. Real HTML, CSS, JavaScript—files and a text editor, not a drag-and-drop panel. I wanted to close that gap on the side, and building my own site seemed like the right place to do it.
It was humbling in the best way. Things I’d normally let the platform handle—navigation states, scroll behavior, responsive breakpoints—I had to think through and build from scratch. It took longer than a CMS build would have. It was also more satisfying than any site I’ve built in a long time.
The Real Constraint
FCS is part-time. I have a full-time job. This site was built in the margins—early mornings, late evenings, a few weekend sprints where I could string together a few hours without interruption.
That constraint actually made the site better. When you only have an hour, you don’t spend it re-litigating a decision you already made. You build the next thing and move. It forced prioritization in a way that an open schedule never does.
What I cut: a portfolio filter I spent three hours on before realizing most visitors will scroll, not filter. An animated logo reveal that looked great in isolation and strange in context. A pricing page that raised more questions than it answered.
What I kept: the work, the writing, a contact form that sends me the message directly, and enough honesty about what the studio is that the wrong client self-selects out before they ever reach out.
Building your own site is the clearest mirror I know for how good you actually are at what you say you do. Every decision you push off—the right copy, the honest positioning, the color that finally feels right—is a decision you’d push a client on.
The site is done now. Or close enough. It’s a living document, like every good creative project. But it represents the work as it actually is: focused, honest, and built by hand.
