Let’s get to know you first. Tell us about yourself.
My name’s Julie Ann Horvath. I’m a designer and front-end developer at GitHub. I’m also the creator, organizer, and MC of the all-female talk series Passion Projects.
Cool, so what’s the story behind your website and its design?
My website is a static blog powered by GitHub Pages and Jekyll. I’m not so sure that it has a story as much it does a purpose. I write about feminism, diversity, and tech on my blog and share my blog posts with everyone from coworkers and peers to reporters. A few of my blog posts have been published as op-ed’s on sites like Business Insider.
Every time I design a website I strive for simplicity and usability. I like clean UIs. I think that’s what I shot for when designing my personal website. I also made it a point to have super legible text, especially when users are visiting it from mobile devices. I read this excellent piece by Jessica Hische on compimentary tyogpraphy for the web and took a lot of inspiration from that.
What part of your website is your favourite, and why?
I’m still very in-love with the date headers above the blog post titles. It’s amazing how you can manipulate a typeface’s look simply by playing with things like letter-spacing, text-transformation, font-size, and color.
Is there anything you wish you knew when you first started building your website?
Hmmmm, I’m not sure there is anything. I’m a big fan of shipping early and iterating often. So if I’ve thought of something between now and the time I originally shipped my website, I’ve probably already implemented it.
Technologies, languages, frameworks, or libraries?
My site is built with HTML & CSS, hosted on GitHub Pages, & powered by the “simple, blog-aware, static site generator,” Jekyll.
Any upcoming changes we should look out for?
Yes! Follow me (@nrrrdcore) on Twitter and keep an eye out for new blog posts. I’ll be writing a lot more in 2014. If there’s something you’re interested in hearing about on my blog, ping me at j.ann.horvath@gmail.com.
