It came about for a few reasons:
1) My current main client's walls were a bit bare, which started me thinking. 2) I then wondered about nice motivational stuff for developer workspaces, specifically -- ideally more cerebral/stuff about good practice, rather than the adrenaline-pumping 'CRUSH IT!' kinda tone or funky designer-oriented posters. Oh, and no crappy jokes. 3) I like the Zen of Python, even years after discovering it. 4) It thought it would be interesting to ship a product that wasn't just bytes.
So, it's a static site (Pelican) + a Shopify backend + a designs from a designer friend + some cash up front to create an affordable print run + a big stack of posters on my spare office desk.
Easy, right?
Er, not quite. It's only been a few weeks and I’ve been rapidly learning that even simple physical products (rather than a SaaS, say) bring a world of complexity... Even though I had experience of the print world (long ago), I’d never had to deal with the mixed quality of print-house results (therefore reprints, therefore delays). Then there's absorbing the cost of defects and damage, plus that need to pre-buy and hold actual stock to reduce the print costs and the angst over shipping physical objects safely (including crossing your fingers when you get a Slack message saying "Hey! The posters just arrived! Opening them now!")
So, yeah, it’s been taking a surprising amount of headspace, but it is still fun – and with lots of small bits of learning (or, perhaps more honestly, small bits of realising that so much of the stuff I've read about physical products is true, even with "simple" posters).
But, yeah, at least it shipped :o)
PS: I know about the FOUC - it's an annoyance of the theme I adapted for the site, which uses skel.js to do responsive layouts (for some reason that I regret not spotting before I pulled the lever and made it live a few weeks ago)
Thanks Mirai...
