34-by-34: Rebranding the Website (4/34)

Monday, May 5th, 2025, 1:56PM.

Hello, world! It is I, Jorge Viramontes, coming back at ya with a brand new blog entry! Today we are on blog entry #4 of our road to 34 blogs by May 30th, 2025! What sort of mess did I get myself into-- stay tuned to find out!

I am at Cafe El Meson sipping on a latte and listening to my 🎻 Classical Music playlist on shuffle with noise-cancelling headphones.

Restoring Integrity

I currently am an unemployed-solopreneur-multi-hyphenate.

I could go into detail and tell you my story right here and now, but I think the most important part for you to know is that:

I am a software engineer and builder, and I’m currently working on dedicating concentrated time on building my personal website, using it as a platform to work on my craft, shape my narrative, and channel my voice.

I’m a pretty fast typer. Through typing, my fingers can mostly keep up with my brain, better than the pen can. So here we are, re-launching this thing, yet again.

But this time, it’s different. I see the larger strategy. I have my priorities in order. I’m in a good headspace to just produce, and I’m so grateful for that.

5/5/2025 2:02PM.

Anywho, I have an ongoing list of things I’d like to do. I’m going to try and dedicate time to get this done as quickly as possible, leveraging a bit of AI if I need it.

My objective is to re-do my blog’s branding— logo, colors, fonts, etc. I have a pretty good idea of how to do this, but now just need to execute.

This is particularly fun for me, because this will be the first time I fully document my workflow, make the changes, and post the artifact somewhere.

Current State of the Blog

Before implementing these changes, it’s always nice to see where we’re at to acknowledge how far we’ve come in our work.

Here are some screenshots of different components of this fun project.

Current Website Homepage

Outdated design

Blog Entry Social Media Link

Below, you can see what a link to my blog looks like on LinkedIn. Unfortunately, it doesn’t include any images or additional description text. It would be nice to add these things to make the preview more visually engaging. I’m going to look into this!

Blog Entry iMessage Preview

Below, this is what it looks like on iMessage. I would like to enrich this, as well.

Blog Entry on Web

This is what an entry on the blog currently looks like.

Blog Entry

Future Vision of the Blog

As time has gone on, it’s been hightime for me to refresh my blog.

The new aesthetic will be professional, bold, impactful, and trustworthy.

Let’s keep it simple. Working with AI, I’ve been able to create the foundation for my new brand. I’ll spare you the details, but here is more or less what I’m going for (the AI generated image is soooooo funny 😆)

Ok, I’m about to dive in. It’s 3:23PM, I took a break to have a B O M B chicken jibarito sandwich. 😋

Diving into the Code

The Tech

Btw, here’s what my project stack looks like. This is a screenshot of my package.json file, which essentially is used to list all the package dependencies included to run the app. It’s mostly using Gatsby on top of React.

Package JSON

Already, I see this will have to change and add our new @fontsource lines for the new fonts.

4:35PM.

Alright, it’s been a long afternoon, but we made the font changes. I also removed where I defined the font multiple times, so in the future it’ll be a much more centralized process and take less time.

Woohoo for finding efficiencies!

Ok, the last few things I’d like to quickly get done today for this blog…

Create updated logo
Change color used in highlight (buttons, links, horizontal line on site header)
Upload today’s blog post
Ensure today’s blog post has a proper title, description, and image in social media preview
Make a post on LinkedIn sharing updates.

Let’s get it!

New logo ideas:

5:36PM

Ooh, this would all be great for a “What’s your personal brand?” post. This fresh new logo, plus a sick shot of me as a speaker on stage in a suit.

Yaaaaas.

7:12PM

Okay, so, I spent a significant amount of time rebranding my website. You can find most of the work I did in this pull request.

10:43PM

Alright, we've made some fantastic progress today.

I'm currently adding the images to this blog, and feeling pretty good with the progress made today. I am contemplating testing another set of colors, and I will cross that bridge when I get to it... but at least today, I was able to undergo a complete rebrand on my website, make it more resilient to future changes, and making my code more robust as I revisit it for this endeavor.

5/6/25 12:28AM

Alright, been a late night and a long day. But feeling really good with the progress I've made today!

Here's a final rundown of the new pages and what they look like!

New Website Home Page

New Home Page

New Blog Home

New Blog Post

One final note...

I also wanted to quickly share that this project doesn't end here. As part of this creative endeavor, I am going to create in other ways, as well. This might look like blogs on LinkedIn, TikTok videos, YouTube videos, and other mediums. This is the central catalyst for this impact - I'll have this as my homebase behind the scenes as I continue to build. Thanks for being along for the ride.

If you wanna make sure you don't miss out on any new posts, send me a message to add you to my VIP list (newsletter, but it's 2025 so it's cool).

Thanks for reading!

5/5/25 -JV