Wearing Design Week: That Night {dot} Net

Happy Hump Day!

Today I bring to you one of my favorite new (to me) blogs. Thatnight {dot} net is a beautiful website created by Rachel and she lives in Pittsburgh (like Quarter Life Lady!). Since I’ll be moving there in August, I am very drawn to her blog. It’s all hand drawn and extremely unique. Rachel herself is very humble and even seemed surprised and happy when I told her how much I love her design. She obviously works very hard on her website and it shows:

This picture doesn’t do the site justice to make sure to visit and check it out for yourself. Her drawings make you want to read (and you will love her content too). Without further ado, I bring you Rachel and what she has to say about her blog:

Basically, I started blogging during a time when instant blog sites (Blogger, WordPress,com, etc.) weren’t really around yet. Back then, if I wanted to “journal” online, my only option was to build a page and then copy and paste text to it.

I wanted my current design to sort of regress to that period. While I love the possibilities social media presents, I’m often frustrated with the “rules” of blog interaction and design, because I think they go against the very nature of blogging. Back when I started, I just wanted to tell quirky stories and show people pretty things, and I didn’t have to worry about networking, or comments, or viewer statistics. Readers would email me if they liked something, and I formed wonderful friendships. Even now, I couldn’t ask for anything better than that.

For my current design, I wanted to hand-draw a lot of the elements just so it seemed more…natural, I guess. I wanted it to portray how much I care about the content.

Also, way back when, if I wanted a nice design, I had to make it myself. There were no themes or layouts to choose from. I’m especially thankful for that now because since I had to teach myself, I never really stopped learning, and I’m still able to code everything on my own. I think it’s worth it for bloggers to start picking up simple, easy code tricks to apply to their own blogs. Small tweaks can really help to represent a blogger’s uniqueness.

It’s so important to never stop learning and Rachel really proves that from her blog. It’s extremely impressive!

Stay tuned readers! I still have many more blogs to feature that I’m sure you will love! If you’re just now reading these posts, be sure to visit the other featured posts (Quarter Life Lady, Make Mine a Mojito, and The Design Girl). Remember, The Design Girl is offering $10 off blog designs and $5 off stationary in honor of Wearing Design Week.

Until next time,

Julie