Kameelah Janan Rasheed is a

from East Palo Alto, CA

 Colophon

In 2023, I ended up designing my site by accident. I hired someone, but the project was never completed, despite a year of waiting and full payment. In late March of 2023, I found myself scurrying to put something together. My first impulse was to get something, anything live. As I approached the last 10 days of Ramadan 1444 AH and was (and still am) processing the death of my nan, the final matriarch and elder, I began to reflect deeply about legacy and intentionality.

For about a week, I spent evenings into the wee hours of the morning designing and coding to make something constitutive of my practice, not a holder of content from my practice. That this is not a website; it is an extension of my art practice.

I am not a professionally trained designer; I am an intuitive designer.  This declaration of “I am not a professionally trained designer; I am an intuitive designer” means I make choices based upon how I feel, rather than if they meet a specific design rule. If there are things I am supposed to do in designing this site, I bet I didn’t do them.

This website is an art object. It is an improvisational digital thingamajig. I am editing this website live, meaning I'm making edits publicly instead of keeping the site private until I have completed all my changes. Some pages become password-protected at certain times of day, while others have no gatekeeping. You may visit the site in the middle of some edits. There may also be some wonky code that may not always work on your end. Sorry, but also, not sorry.

The hiccups and variability in access are pleasant, textured moments that remind us of the human behind the process. And quite honestly, the most fun I have had over the last thirty years of being on the internet has been the detours initiated by a website owner’s sloppy code, missing links, or complete abandonment of the project. Much of my code resembles spaghetti code, and I am still unsure whether I find beauty or annoyance in that categorization.


As a pre-teen, I got my first chance to code and design as a member of Plugged-In Enterprises.

Coding and design felt like a little bit of magic -- typing out a formula or engaging in a set of rituals; maybe it is a spell of sorts.


I am inspired by the ethos of Chia Amisola (specifically, this project) and Laurel Schwulst’s essay, My website is a shifting house next to a river of knowledge. What could yours be? 

This domain, www.kameelahr.com was first created and  registered on 2010-04-07 18:06:08 UTC

Color

︎ The accent color is #7400ff.  While designing my nan’s obituary, I found these photos of her wearing this beautiful purple skirt and blouse outfit. I wanted the accent color to be connected 

︎  It is not a font; I wrote out each one, then converted the handwriting into a vector file. 

I like the vernacular of handwriting as a reminder that a human was indeed here. Standardized typefaces make me bored, and I love to experience undulating text with inconsistent kerning, skittish baselines, and goofy apertures. I understand typography, but I don't always enjoy following the rules.

If I had the time to handwrite the whole site, I would.

︎ The main font is Bradford, designed by Laurenz Brunner and released by Lineto in 2018.

︎The secondary font is Inter, designed by Rasmus Andersson and released in 2017.  

Logos, Icons, and Symbols

︎ The favicon  is sourced from the Noun Project.

︎ The header icons are annotations and noise from my archive and past work.