BuildingYourIdea.com
Getting Started...
The engineer in me wants full control so I built this site from scratch using Next.js, Tailwind CSS, and Vercel. I know this stack well enough to move fast, and it's flexible enough to build exactly what I wanted. Time will tell if this gives me the ability to build all the features I want or if I get bogged down in maintenance.
The Comic
Most sites use a hero image or video. I made a comic instead. The version shown here is the original AI generated concept, but it needed a lot of cleanup in Figma before it was ready for the homepage. Turns out AI thinks happy customers have three arms. Let me know if you want more details on this process.
Logo & Branding
This took some time! I worked with a designer to help me work out what I wanted. I knew I liked the feel of the comic and had the name 'Building Your Idea' but that was it. We went through several iterations of the logo and branding before landing on the final version. I wanted something that felt playful and approachable but also professional and trustworthy. After a lot of playing around in Figma I landed on the Itim font and this logo.
Favicon
The little icon in the browser tab is called a favicon. The lightbulb is the icon to use in small spaces but even that felt too large so I simplified it down to just the lightbulb with light rays for the favicon in the accent color.
Pushing Firmware Updates
I work remotely so when I send a client a prototype I can't just take it back and update the firmware. To push updates to the devices I built a custom OTA update system leveraging the API and database tools on Vercel.
Link Tracking
Don't worry, I'm not spying on you. This site doesn't use cookies or any other tracking that follows you around the web. But I am interested in which 'marketing' links are clicked. All 'marketing' links are buildingyouridea.com/r with the campaign, site, and destination as parameters. The middleware handles tracking and redirection. I tried using Vercel's Analytics for this but didn't want to pay for it so I was not able to do much. I then switched to my original plan anyway and used a custom Redis database. I will be using their data browser for now but may build a custom dashboard later.