Each website is a challenge to create something unique, to add an unfamiliar element, to push the boundaries of my past work—whether it's behind the scenes in code or purely visual. Every page is a learning experience.

Inspiration comes in colors, shaped by shadows and objects, while pages take on personalities to entertain, to educate, and to inspire. I design for myself as a challenge to take things further that I have before, but the end result is solely for the audience to enjoy.

Once inspiration for a website hits—whether from a photograph, colors, or an object on my desk—it becomes an intense rush to draft my ideas in photoshop. Hours may pass while I try to perfect every pixel.

When the page is drafted the rest is easy. A static XHTML page is created for the layout, and a CSS file is created to turn my design into something a browser can understand. I work with "liquid design"—design done in layers not tables like websites of the past. Each new site is an exploration into some new aspect of CSS (or any part of my code), as there is still so much to learn.

If the page calls for it, I write the server-side code (usually in PHP) around the design. If I'm designing for someone else, the challenge then becomes to design the website around the pre-existing code. That's where things get interesting, and where I learn something.

"How the heck did you do that?" is a common question I get from my friends when they see my work. Practice is all I can offer in reply. I've been creating websites since fourth grade, so I've had quite a bit of it. I remember the first thing I put into HTML: a picture of pikachu, actually a dancing pikachu. This miraculous feat was then followed by a horribly glitzy, sparkly background, rows of pokeballs, and some barely visible text that had absolutely no contrast against the background.

I taught myself everything I know now, mainly through resources like W3 schools and trial-and-error. Before I had Biyeun.com, I had a website called phuzzie.net (phuzzie was an old nickname). It went through four design changes, highlighted on the right, before I finally designed this website. As you can see I went through several phases: the confused-I-just-want-a-U2-theme look, the monotone-blue-corporate-forever look, the grungy-dirty-pixel-detail look, and the back-to-blue-monotone-with-cool-banners look, to what I now describe as the webpage-on-psychadelic-colors-and-crack look.