01 — idea
The site is a hanging file.
Waking Ideas has been a personal site since 2005. The new identity does not pretend it is a studio, a product, or a portfolio. It is a desk, a folder, and the tabs of a life of making.
Three old sketches become one system. The v5 file folder is the chrome: click a tab, that section comes forward. The themed post is the inner sheet: photography sets the color of the page. The deep color field is the desk the folder sits on.
The name does the rest. Waking is first light, and also keeping watch — the lighthouse, the radio left on. Ideas are the papers in the file. Some are finished. Most are still waking up.
02 — system
Folder, tabs, themed sheets.
The folder never leaves the screen. You do not go to other pages. You pull a tab. One sheet comes forward; the rest of the file stays underneath, tabs peeking out of the right edge. The inner sheet changes color with whatever it holds. Journal takes the sea. Kitchen takes peach light. Listening takes dusk. Work stays paper.
Tab names keep the old voice on purpose: music is for you, snack on that. They are longer than they need to be. That is the point.
03 — mark
A folder on a field. One orange tab.
The mark is the hanging file reduced to three shapes: a cream rectangle, a tan spine, a dawn-orange tab. It sits on the desk color. No letterforms. The wordmark does the speaking; the mark does the filing.
Favicon, avatar, print: same object, same angle, same orange. If it needs to live next to type, the tab points right, toward the words.
04 — color
First light on paper.
The desk is deep sea. The file is manila. The only loud color is dawn — the waking. Everything else is a tab: sea, lavender, peach, graphite.
05 — type
A book serif and a file label.
waking ideas
No single port, no single bearing.
journal · pictures · since 2005
Newsreader for everything a person reads. IBM Plex Mono for everything a file would stamp: tabs, dates, kickers, the spine. Anton, almost invisible, is the ghost of the old “awake” cover — a 2008 scar kept at seven percent.
06 — voice
Warm, unfinished, specific.
Write like the file is already open. Lowercase in the wordmark. Dates as if they were stamped. Short sentences next to a long italic pull. Do not pitch. Do not say “creative.” Name the game, the storm, the toast.
The old site had polaroid frames and a corporate W. Those go. The lighthouse, the radio, the Idaho spine, and the odd tab names stay.
07 — rules
Do
- Keep the folder an object on a desk, never a full-bleed app chrome.
- Let photography dye the inner sheet.
- Use dawn orange only for the active tab, links, and waking moments.
- Leave empty paper. The closed file is a brand moment.
- Keep tab labels a little too personal.
Don’t
- Don’t revive the shield W.
- Don’t set the wordmark in all caps or as one word.
- Don’t put the site in charcoal-and-white developer clothes.
- Don’t distress the type except as a ghost on the cover.
- Don’t add a hamburger menu. The tabs are the menu.
08 — from the sketches
What was kept.
v5idea. The hanging file, the side tabs, the sense that the site is a physical object, the spine metadata, the cover you can close.
themed-post-idea. A cream card on a colored field. Photo left, editorial type right. The page dressed for the post — Halloween peach, open-water teal, dusk lavender.
deep-idea. Architectural color. The wordmark as a quiet event. A desk made of sea instead of a white webpage.