It has been a while since I gave this site a real overhaul.
The last major redesign moved BDCrowell.com away from an old, non-responsive theme and made it usable on phones and tablets. That was an important change, but the site has continued to grow since then. Stories, artwork, videos, book information, and a handful of ongoing projects had accumulated in different corners, and the design no longer did a very good job of showing how they fit together.
So I went back through it page by page.
Before: the previous homepage had served the site for years, but its most useful destinations were competing with a lot of visual clutter.
After: a calmer homepage gives the work more room and offers clearer paths to stories, drawing sessions, books, and recent posts.
The new design is still unmistakably this site: warm, bookish, a little handmade, and built around the things I create. The difference is that it now has a clearer structure. Storytime with Brian and Draw with Brian have their own homes. The Library is no longer a plain list of links. The Gallery now draws from my DeviantArt collection and lets you view artwork without leaving the page. Blog posts have a more consistent reading width, reading-time estimates, updated sharing tools, and less material crowding the story itself.
Before: the Library worked more like a reference table than a place to discover a book.
After: book details, reading information, purchase choices, and reader reviews now live together.
The change may be most obvious on a phone. The old responsive theme technically fit smaller screens, but that did not always mean it was comfortable to use. The new layout was designed and checked at phone sizes from the beginning.
Before on a phone.
After on a phone.
There are smaller changes throughout the site, too: a seasonal homepage image, a tidier navigation bar, easier ways to subscribe or get in touch, a refreshed About page, and a lot of old inconsistencies quietly cleaned up behind the scenes.
I have kept the site on Blogger. That means the archive remains where it has always been, old links should continue to work, and the redesign could focus on making the existing collection easier to read and explore rather than starting over somewhere else.
There may still be a loose thread or two after a change this large. If you find one—or if there is something you especially like—please use the Contact link at the bottom of the page and let me know.
Pull up a chair and have a look around.
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