The trend is clean and clear.

Templates and blank sites from WordPress or Webflow come premade with this style. Homepages are designed to be bold and scarcely worded. Pages are long with blocked horizontal lines depicting features or settings. 

But I'm going the complete opposite direction. I want a textured background and sketches layered behind the content giving the appearance of a piece of drawn on paper ripped from a book. Because when I think of how I want my site, I think of my mixture of art and science. Throughout school when I didn't have time to connect with my other passions, my tiny outlets of creativity were my sketches in my class notebook. 

It seems completely old school and elementary to tile a paper background. Like a kid learning HTML that doesn't know what else to do. At least this tile doesn't obviously show the lines of all the tiles. But drawing on this inspiration and my love of the theory and enchantment of my life, I wanted to depict my sketchy notes.

My love for grid-lined paper started in high school when I discovered how much I enjoyed the ability to perfectly line up my notes as I created my lab reports. Then it was rediscovered in organic chemistry as I had to draw hexagon after hexagon of benzene rings. Nothing is as difficult as drawing a billion hexagons and trying to make them legible within the timespan of a class. 

The first portfolio site on Weebly was designed with an actual homepage. It followed the, now normal, minimal and crisp look of a single picture and a few words for a page. I remember it being hard to figure out what to put on a homepage. It was one line to explain myself enough to lure people into clicking a menu button and reading a blog. And it was impossible. So when I redid my blog on Webflow and the blog page was once again set as a homepage, I just left it.

But now, after a few sparks of creativity thanks to other's websites [Shantell Martin was a particular favorite that struck my heart]. I found the perfect place to demonstrate my messy, scratchy, note style sketches. The homepage! So now it's time to focus on that. Now that I know it isn't totally dependent on that one line, it can be visually luring and dynamic. 

...I just need to design it and figure out how to do it. Hopefully, the next sketch isn't quite so 'inspired' by Shantell. And to any family members reading this: a sketching tablet for Christmas would be a dream!