I wrote a course, but it’s so much more than that

This week, I published Complete CSS. After 15+ years of teaching, architecting and delivering CSS for global organisations and startups, I’ve collated that experience into an extensive course. It’s been by far the biggest piece of work I’ve — sorry, we’ve — ever delivered in this industry and I just wanted to acknowledge that for a second on this personal website of mine.

It’s not just a course about writing CSS. In fact, this part is the most important part:

You can spend all the time in the world focussing purely on your CSS knowledge, however, top level front-end development is about so much more than just writing code. It’s about communication, planning and pragmatic execution. I’m going to teach you these fundamental core skills — often described as “soft skills” — which will push you beyond the next level.

Nailing my core skills was undoubtedly the most valuable thing I did for my professional career. I think it helps that I’m not a typical developer too; I actually wanted to be a musician and worked in kitchens, suit shops, high fashion retail before eventually, slinging websites. I think I developed a lot of my communication skills away from the web, so I wanted to make that a real focal point of my course content because a lot of people who will read it will have only been developers.

As I say in the Giving and receiving feedback lesson:

…core skills like communication are crucial in writing better HTML, CSS and JS. You might be thinking “how though?!”, which to be fair, is understandable. Allow me to change your perspective. By nailing communication you will by proxy, simplify and sanitise design work. This results in simpler code, which is what we should always be aiming for.

I’ve spent a large chunk of those 15 years as a consultant, helping organisations — both global corporations and small startups — write better CSS. In almost every case an improvement of the organisation’s core skills were the overarching difference in output.

This is more than just a course

I actually managed to turn this content concept into three things: a workshop, a talk and eventually a course. This was a very deliberate decision because I knew I could keep refining the content as I went through each process. I’m so glad all three were all tangibly related to each other in the end. Feels like a heck of an achievement, if you will allow me to give myself the smallest of pats on the back.

Also, this year at Set Studio, we put the foundations down to turn Piccalilli into a proper publisher. That process started with a re-platforming, which led to a small design iteration, which led to a full redesign, which eventually led to us publishing a course. It’s all about iteration in our shop.

Where we are now with Piccalilli is our foundation to blast forward and really get behind other authors and help them to publish their material, and earn fairly by doing so. A lot of publishers give paltry royalty rates while also expecting authors to lead the promotion of the material they wrote. It’s not fair and we want to make a difference by doing the exact opposite.

We decided to publish my course first though, for a couple of reasons:

1. We could be scrappy and iterate fast with me writing the material, rather than stressing out another author
2. I had one big course in me that I’ve wanted to publish for a few years and now felt like the right time

This is my third course now so I’ve got enough experience to be able to adapt. I didn’t need to do that though because the Set team are frankly, geniuses. I’ve never felt more supported during a huge body of work. In fact, I felt super-charged by their endless talent. I wrote the words, but they made it look and feel excellent. (Thank you again, Leanne, Vicky and Jason. You’re the best team.)

We want other authors to experience what happens when you get a team like Set Studio behind you too. We’ve only scratched the surface of what’s possible with my course and the way we’ve built this system means that authors can produce material in almost any format you can imagine. The highly themeable system that powers the Piccalilli UI also allows us to have a completely bespoke look and feel for each course.

This is the bit I’m really excited about. Sure, I feel so proud of myself for delivering this course, but what I will take the most enjoyment out of is being an author’s wingman and pushing them further than they thought they could ever go.

Piccalilli isn’t recognisable from where it was last year. Just wait until you see what we do with it in 2025. The best way to support that? Get a copy of Complete CSS.