5 years since the .NET Mag article

Man, I remembering this being a big deal for me. I was lucky enough to be in the last (I think) .NET Mag (pour one out) 5 years ago. Timehop reminded me earlier.

Screw it, here’s a transcribed version.

Meet the educator and web designer who’s helping the community via an astonishing array of side projects.

Could you briefly introduce yourself to anyone who doesn’t know you?

I’m Andy, an educator and web designer from the UK.

I’m trying to help people learn how to make high-performing, accessible and inclusive digital products and websites. I do this while also running a freelance design and development client-services business.

You’ve released a LOT of side projects to help the community: what drives you to do so and how do you find the time?

A lot of the time, these projects come from my own selfish need rather than trying to help the community.

It’s usually when I get part of the way through the project that I think, ‘Huh, maybe the community could really benefit from this. I’d better share it’.

A good example of this is my modern CSS reset (https://github.com/hankchizljaw/modern-css-reset), which spent so many years being tinkered with in private. Eventually, though, I gathered some folks might find it handy. Turns out they did!

In terms of finding time: I’m just one of those annoying, hyper-organised people that has a plan for everything. Everything is organised to the nth degree and related to that, I couldn’t recommend bullet journalling and Notion (notion.so) more if I tried.

To date, which of your tools has got most traction and why?

I think one of the most talked about tools was Hylia (https://hylia.website), which is an Eleventy starter kit.

It was something I wanted to make for a while because I saw a gap for a tool that anyone could use to publish their own content – even if they couldn’t code.

I also wanted it to be really modular and easy to extend, which I achieved with a straightforward Sass setup that is powered by design tokens. The combo of this and its ease-of-publishing seems to have gone down really well with the web community and beyond.

How is your screencast course, CSS From Scratch, coming along and why should people sign up to it?

Glad you asked. That course is actually being amalgamated into a bigger project that’s being put together at the moment: Piccalilli (https://piccalil.li). Piccalilli started life as a CSS newsletter but it’s evolving into a brand new project that will be focused on tutorials, articles and courses that I produce along with, of course, the newsletter.

Along with my other related project, Front-End Challenges Club (https://front-end-challenges.club), my focus is increasingly in education, which is exactly where I want to be.

What can we expect from you in the future?

Education is certainly taking a front seat. I’m hoping to release two or three courses this year, along with the rest of the Piccalilli tutorials and Front-End Challenges Club challenges. The aim is for education to be the primary part of my business, with making websites for clients, the secondary part. A complete flip from where it currently is.

We’re also going to be adding some cool stuff to Every Layout (https://every-layout.dev), including a potential print version. Lots of work to do on that front, though!

What else is exciting you most in the field of web design right now?

It’s got to be JAMstack. Very much related that, something that really excites me more than any tech or tools is that performance and accessibility seem to be getting a front-row seat, which I’m very much on board with.

Static site generators seem to be leading this charge and my favourite, Eleventy, is definitely doing great things to help people produce incredibly lightweight websites. I see a very bright, speedy future.

It’s quite amusing to read that back. I had way too much optimism in my ability to churn out courses lol. At least now I know hard and time consuming they are.

It’s also funny how the CSS From Scratch one did eventually come out. It just arrived as Learn CSS and Complete CSS, with a few years of more experience in there.