👋 Hey, I'm Ethan — welcome to my new portfolio site! It felt only right that my first post explains the thinking behind this redesign.

I find portfolios with intricate animations, funky illustrations, and bold design choices incredibly inspiring — but that's not the direction I went here. I wanted something clean, timeless, and elegant that makes it easy to showcase my work and writing without fighting the design itself.

Past versions of my site were built in Webflow, which gave me a lot of creative freedom, but came with real tradeoffs. Custom animations were a pain to get right, adding case studies took longer than it should have, and the designs always felt tied to a particular moment in time — trendy in year one, dated by year two. I was constantly itching to redesign.

This time around, I used tools like Cursor alongside Claude and OpenAI to build a framework that actually scales. It's easier to update, easier to extend, and I don't feel the urge to blow it up every six months.

One thing that was missing from every previous version of my site was a dedicated place to write. I always had thoughts on design I wanted to share but nowhere to put them — so that was non-negotiable this time.

Going forward, expect posts on everything from design to product, to books I'm reading and tools I find interesting. Glad you're here.