Design in the Open

In the past 10 or so years of me working on things for the web, I have been so thankful for people who have contributed to allow me to do what I do.

From Photoshop tutorials by MickM, commenters on deviantArt (cringe!), feedback from personal friends, right up to incredible people such as Harry Roberts and Chris Coyier publishing their thoughts out in the open—I wouldn’t be where I am today without a huge web of information available at the click of a mouse. So I think it’s only fair that I give back into the community.

I have already started open-sourcing some projects on GitHub for people to take, break and improve upon. Now I think my next step is to start designing in the open when I’m working on big things.

Below is an embedded pen with my first thoughts on a slight redesign for the Valley Church website. At the time of writing it’s only slightly responsive, and it’s probably broken in older versions in IE. But it’s out in the open for everyone to see!

See the Pen Valley Church v3 by Rick Butterfield (@rickbutterfield) on CodePen.

This website is also a part of that idea. The theme’s code will be open sourced on GitHub soon as a resource for other people to use and learn from.

In closing, I love what I get to do!