HomeThoughtsLibraryAbout

Observations, reflections & discoveries.

A running log of things that I feel worth sharing online.

Career

The generalist needs a new definition.

Read thought ›
Mindset

A builder mindset makes you a sharper designer

Read thought ›
Career

Everybody will need mid-level designers soon

Read thought ›
Design

Sameness creates the perfect opportunity for designers to add value

Read thought ›
Craft

Taste is one of the pillars you stand on

Read thought ›
Career

Juniors are moving fast with tech leverage, and it's a big dent

Read thought ›
Culture

Values and cross-collaboration fights are opposites

Read thought ›
Craft

Seeing a clear picture in the mess is an art

Read thought ›
Career

The junior designer's “wow” gap

Read thought ›

Get in touch.

Email ↗LinkedIn ↗Instagram ↗YouTube ↗
© 2026 Darshan Suthar

How this artefact came to life?

This site is small on purpose. Here is the whole thinking, in three parts.

I wanted something small and clearly mine, not a big website. Four places, nothing extra, each with one job:

  • Home: who I am, fast. It leads with my name, the three hats, and the work
  • Thoughts: a running log, not essays. Short and casual, the way I'd say it to a friend
  • Podcast: just the guests and where to listen. The people are the pitch
  • About: how I got here, told in chapters, because a career is a story, not a resume

Navigation stays a tiny glass pill up top, and an app-style bar at the bottom on mobile that slides away as you scroll.

If you can't hold the whole map in your head, it's too much.

Honest bit: I'm a designer, not an engineer. I built this by talking it through with an AI (Claude), step by step.

It didn't start fancy. First it was plain hand-built HTML and CSS, just to nail the look. Once the design felt right, I rebuilt it on Next.js so it could actually grow.

Then three tools, each with one clear job:

  • GitHub holds the code
  • Vercel hosts the site and redeploys automatically on every push
  • Supabase holds the content, the media, and the login

The workflow stays simple:

  • Design and feature changes happen in code, then a push to GitHub, and Vercel puts it live in a minute or two
  • Content changes happen in a login-protected admin panel and show up instantly, no code, no deploy

No overlap, so I always know where a thing lives.

This is the part I cared about most. I host a podcast and I write often, so new episodes, new thoughts and new photos show up all the time. I didn't want to touch code every time that happens.

So the content lives in a database, one table per kind of thing:

  • Thoughts, case studies, podcast episodes
  • Custom pages, so I can spin up a new page anytime
  • Hero stats, About chapters, testimonials, and my links

Each item has a draft or published switch and its own SEO fields.

The media sits in one place in Supabase, kept in tidy folders:

  • Podcast guest photos in one folder
  • Case-study images in their own
  • Thought icons in another

The site just points at those URLs, so swapping an image is a drop-in, not a code change. Add it all up and the site grows with me instead of freezing the day it launched.