I’m highlighting this new redesign of Ahmad Shadeed’s website because it ticks so many boxes for me as excellent work.
First up, it’s clean, considered and uses typography and space really well. Ahmad’s site is a combination of a personal site and a professional site and they’ve rightly allowed space in their design while delivering flair in tasteful and subtle ways. Sure if your site is purely personal, do whatever you want and put as much flair in there as you want, but for personal and professional contexts, it’s really important to let the content shine for all tastes, just like Ahmad has.
One bit I really like is the way Ahmad demonstrates their Debugging CSS book on the homepage. I like how instead of just showing a cover, they showcase pages of the book. All of this is delivered in my favourite type of Content Showing Up On Scroll™ — it doesn’t overwhelm and most importantly, scroll jacking is not utilised. Because it’s the only section of the page that behaves like this, that content really stands out. It’s a good example of using animation tastefully and for impact.
Lastly, I love the about page. Ahmad has found the sweet spot of talking about their professional accolades while showing what makes them special as a person. Again, they use animation tastefully along with some fantastic photography work.
If you’re looking for inspiration from one of the best in the biz, set some time aside to really look into the details of this fantastic new website.