Design Notes With Single Illustration:
I stumbled on this site with no clue how I got there. I spent a few days marveling the design, the layout. I like it. Clean. Simple. In part, it looks some of the elements are almost a decade old, sort “web-retro,” in a manner of addressing an issue.
Still, the opening page, despite its header flaws, it’s still a good-looking, to me, way to lay out a page. Very simple. Not extraneous crap.
No bells, whistles, no podcast enclosures, no adverts for dubious sites, and so forth.
I can only hope that regular subscribers have noticed the subtle change. I managed quick change that removes even more advertising and extra (unnecessary) material from the sidebar in the paid-per-view horoscopes. Lots of research, and many development cycles, just to make that work correctly.
Simple is so hard to do.
Yes, simplifying can be very complicated to set up. But the payoff is worth it. I like the clean, open look that you’ve gradually achieved. Sure beats the heck out of some places I visit, where I’ve learned where to look on the page for the relevant stuff, but the eye clutter is considerable. I also like the subtle humor in your fishing boat logo and in your pictures of yourself in various places.