Book cover

Craft your personal
website from scratch

Learn and apply the foundations of
web design and web development.

Sign up to peek behind the scenes, get free chapters, and be notified when the book launches.

Author's portrait

Hey! I’m Arun, a software engineer turned product designer and creator of arun.is, a personal blog about design and technology.

My site has served as a playground for learning design techniques and new technologies — skills that have directly transferred to my career. It has also helped me build an audience and get noticed by successful professionals.

While learning how to make arun.is, I consumed countless articles, courses, and books on a wide range of topics, from typography and color, to web hosting and JavaScript frameworks like React.

All along the way, I noticed that only 20% or so of each resource was useful. I wondered why no one hadn’t yet compiled those valuable tactics into a book focused solely on personal websites.

That’s why I’m distilling everything I know into Crafting Personal Websites, a book that covers everything needed to design and code a beautiful, modern personal website — from scratch.

Who it’s for

For designers and developers alike

Designers

You’ve designed websites and UIs in the past. Maybe you already know HTML and CSS, but you don’t know where to start when developing your own website. Or you simply don’t know which tools among the ever-growing ocean of frameworks to learn.

In this book, I’ll walk you through every step, from choosing tools, to designing a website, to building and launching it with the best modern technology.

Developers

Perhaps, you have taste and can spot a well-designed website, but you haven’t yet cracked the magic needed to make your own site stand out.

Let me tell you a secret. Great design is a result not of magic, but of tried and true rules and frameworks. In this book, you’ll learn how to harness those rules and frameworks to make a beautiful personal website that will rise above the crowd.

What's covered

Learn the good stuff, nothing else

Design

  1. Typography
  2. Layout
  3. Color
  4. Imagery

Development

  1. HTML
  2. CSS
  3. Accessibility
  4. Performance

Distribution

  1. Typography
  2. Layout
  3. Color
  4. Imagery

What you’ll use

Modern tools and technologies

Figma

Use features like auto layout, variants, and libraries to design beautiful webpages.

TailwindCSS

No more clunky, handwritten CSS. Use the power of TailwindCSS to rapidly go from Figma to code.

11ty (Eleventy)

Harness the speed and flexibility of Eleventy, a simple, modern, javascript-based static site generator, to create a fast static website.

Github

Learn the basics of a developer workflow using git and set up your site to automatically deploy as you commit new changes.

© 2021 Arun Venkatesan