Check the website at martinjancik.me
2022 is the year of fives. As I’m approaching my fifth year at Kiwi.com and we are organizing the fifth edition of Global Travel Jam, I freshly finished the fifth redesign of my personal website.
Going back, I deducted that I had published my first portfolio 9 years ago. Over the iterations, I realized that consolidating my track record into a website became a mental exercise for me. I will bring you closer to my thinking behind the latest version in the paragraphs below. Let’s start at the beginning – brainstorming the 5.0 concept.
Concept
As hinted in the 2021 recap, the central theme is – My corner on the internet. Creating a place that doesn’t scream self-promo but can be used as a crossroad in my life. Express in the simplest essence my consistency, organization, and progress. A place to gather all the milestones while showing my personality. A view into an essential, minimalistic person who changes his grey sweatshirt for a black T-shirt from time to time.
As I was thinking about this direction, I found inspiration in my daily work. Recently, I have been hiring a lot for our design team and therefore reading through resumes. A CV (or resume) became the inspiration artifact when sketching the website. It is simple, fast to read, aimed toward clarity and common understanding. Structured the same as I want my website to be. The concept seemed flexible enough to address the key issues I faced with the previous version.
Issues
During the lifetime of the 4.0 website version, I tried to work on its flaws, but the version had a couple of significant conceptual shortcomings.
Responsive version was an afterthought. It was visible that the design had been created desktop first. It is challenging as Webflow, the ecosystem I use to develop the website, uses the desktop breakpoint as a baseline. With 5.0, I spent more time in Figma tweaking the mobile layout to ensure I was not biased during the development.
Old website contained content I had not updated regularly. The website had sections that were important in the storytelling of who I’m. Especially the after-hours page of my previous website showed me beyond the design world. Unfortunately, this content has been clunky to update, and I struggled to keep it relevant. Going forward, I had to streamline how to show myself as a person primarily by linking outside of the website. For example, my Instagram running diary.
Details
The teachers taught us that the best resumes are one-pagers. Nobody is going to read a long CV. I took this as a challenge and tried to center the website into a single main page.
With all the simplification, the website had become a pdf document. It didn’t express me as a creative visual thinker. Therefore, I introduced small visuals that don’t interfere with the website’s core content but bring sparkly moments of joy to the reading. This led me to re-tweak the headline letter spacing a couple times and introduce subtle CSS animations across the website. One example is the current mission section which has a recording animation. To illustrate, it is going live – happening right now.
The font selection stayed the same as in all my previous versions – Work Sans. I kept it as it provides me almost unlimited flexibility. At the same time, its personality fits nicely with the idea that this website is about hours of grinding.
I decided to switch my main domain. Starting this version, the default domain is martinjancik.me. However, the redirection from mjancik.com will work. There is a simple reason. I don’t consider this website’s primary use for business .com (company). This is a personal site about .me.
Projects
Showcasing case studies on design leadership is a challenge. Many times I don’t produce clear, tangible outputs. The leadership role comes with many hats. On any particular day, I can be a strategist, politician, scout, manager, designer, just to name a few. With this in mind, I selected projects that show my contribution in various areas. A product design case study, my personal managerial framework (coming soon), an event I have been organizing for the last couple of years, and the current operations of the team I lead.
6.0
I can guarantee that 2 years from today, I will look at this website and ask myself: “How could I have done this? I need to rework it into a new 6.0 version.”
I continually strive to evolve as a design leader and person. It comes with a side effect that new, previously invisible shortcomings appear before my eyes. The only thing I can do is embrace it. Tell myself that to do a 6.0 version in the future, I first needed to release this. It is not about the release but the mental exercise behind it—an exercise to be honest with myself at this time and at this moment.
A note for future MJ: I’m so sorry I did this; I tried my current best.
List of great designers whose portfolios inspired me:
I have exciting news to share: You can now read People Over Pixels in the new Substack app for iPhone.
With the app, you’ll have a dedicated Inbox for my Substack and any others you subscribe to. New posts will never get lost in your email filters, or stuck in spam. Longer posts will never cut-off by your email app. Comments and rich media will all work seamlessly. Overall, it’s a big upgrade to the reading experience.
The Substack app is currently available for iOS. If you don’t have an Apple device, you can join the Android waitlist here.