I recently watched a video on YouTube lamenting the lack of personality and customization options in modern user interfaces and websites. Its creator is right: modern design is dull and leaves little room for self expression.

I've a lot of thoughts about why this is happening (and how we can reverse the trend), but right now I'd like to focus on my little corner of the Internet. This website has had many different designs in its first quarter-century and I thought it might be fun to bring one or two back.

Starting today, you'll find a new theme picker in the bottom of the site where you can select from old designs.

It's been a nice forcing function, encouraging me to tidy up a few of the rough edges in my HTML where the design has bled into the markup, and to encourage me to really think hard about the structural elements of the page. I'm curious to think about how these designs will translate to smaller screens over time–the proliferation of smartphones is offered as one of the reasons our interfaces have become plainer and it will be interesting to test that theory with some of my heavier-weight designs.