# NIX STORIES ## THIS IS WHAT THE NEW NIX LOOKS LIKE

Something has changed.

Not the subject matter. Not the slightly obsessive level of detail. Not the orange. Definitely not the orange.

What has changed is the way NIX STORIES actually feels.

For a long time, this website has grown the same way most personal websites grow. One idea becomes a page. One adventure becomes a blog. One photograph becomes ten photographs. A campervan electrical upgrade somehow becomes a 4,000-word investigation involving Victron graphs, battery chemistry and a man calling himself Professor Spark.

Perfectly normal behaviour.

But the site has reached the point where the old idea of a conventional blog no longer quite fits what NIX has become.

NIX is drones.

NIX is Vanilla.

NIX is Torque.

NIX is photography.

NIX is long drives through the night.

NIX is strange little roadside discoveries, European adventures, music, technology, weather, food experiments, pub stops, maps, videos and occasionally a completely unnecessary graph.

So STORIES is changing with it.

This page is partly a story and partly a demonstration.

I’m going to drop random photographs into it.

Some might relate to the words around them.

Some probably won’t.

And that is entirely the point.

Because the new NIX layout is designed to behave less like a traditional blog and more like a digital magazine.

Most websites still present stories in roughly the same format.

Title.

Photograph.

Big column of text.

Another photograph.

More text.

Another photograph.

Eventually you reach the bottom and wonder where the last six minutes went.

There is nothing particularly wrong with that.

It works.

But NIX has never been particularly good at staying inside neat little boxes.

A story about Vanilla might suddenly need a map.

Then a photograph.

Then a specification card.

Then a YouTube video.

Then a completely unrelated picture I took because the light looked brilliant.

The old format could contain all of that.

The new format is designed around it.

The biggest difference is that stories can now be built from individual editorial blocks.

Text can sit on its own.

A photograph can dominate the page.

Two images can sit together.

A video can have room to breathe.

A map can appear between sections.

Technical information can live inside a specification card rather than being buried inside a paragraph.

Quotes can become visual moments.

Galleries can interrupt the flow.

Large images can stretch across the screen.

Small details can sit beside text.

On a desktop, some of these elements can appear side by side.

On a phone, they simply stack neatly into one column.

Same story.

Different canvas.

That is exactly how it should work.

This is the real reason for the change.

When I write about something, I rarely just want to record what happened.

I want to recreate it.

The drive.

The weather.

The machinery.

The ridiculous decisions.

The scenery.

The soundtrack.

The little details that somehow become the things you remember most.

A conventional blog layout makes everything equal.

Paragraph.

Paragraph.

Photograph.

Paragraph.

The new NIX STORIES system can give different moments different weight.

A great photograph can be huge.

A technical detail can be compact.

A big statement can stand alone.

A sequence of images can become a gallery.

A map can explain a journey faster than three paragraphs ever could.

The page starts developing rhythm.

And suddenly reading the story feels much closer to experiencing it.

This is where I’ll probably put something completely excessive.

Maybe Vanilla somewhere dramatic.

Maybe the LV4 wheels.

Maybe one of my drone shots.

Maybe Caroline.

Maybe all of them eventually.

The point is that the design can accommodate it without the article feeling broken.

That matters because NIX has thousands of photographs, screenshots, route maps and little visual fragments that deserve more than being squeezed into a narrow column.

This was one of the most important parts of the redesign.

I have already written a lot.

A frightening amount, actually.

Some sensible.

Some detailed.

Some bordering on forensic evidence.

Rebuilding all of those stories manually would be madness.

So the new system is designed to work with what is already there.

Existing articles still work.

Their original text remains intact.

But the site can progressively enhance them.

If I later add another photograph, gallery, map or video, the layout can adapt around it.

That means an old story can quietly become better over time without having to be completely rewritten.

That is exactly how I want NIX to work.

It should evolve.

Put something bizarre here.

Perhaps a photograph that has absolutely nothing to do with this paragraph.

I rather like that idea.

Because magazines do this brilliantly.

Sometimes an image is there because it provides information.

Sometimes it is there because it creates atmosphere.

Sometimes it is there simply because it looks fantastic.

Not every photograph needs to justify its existence with a caption and a committee meeting.

While STORIES becomes richer, the top level of the site is actually becoming simpler.

The new main gateways are:

Six doors into the NIX world.

That gives the site a much clearer structure.

SKY covers the flying side of NIX.

ROAD is where Vanilla, travel and the miles live.

TRAIL belongs to Torque and everything that happens away from tarmac.

GALLERIES gives the photography room to exist purely as photography.

VIDEOS collects the moving pictures.

And STORIES is where everything can collide.

The existing A–Z index remains underneath all of that for anyone who wants to disappear into the deeper corners of the site.

Which, knowing this website, is where some of the best bits will probably be hiding.

This one should be enormous.

No reason.

Just enormous.

The new layout is not just about making the desktop version look clever.

Most people will see this on a phone.

That means everything has to collapse gracefully.

Side-by-side blocks become stacked blocks.

Large photographs scale properly.

Text stays readable.

Menus remain balanced.

Buttons remain easy to tap.

Nothing should look like the desktop website has simply been squeezed through a letterbox.

The mobile layout has to feel designed in its own right.

That is part of the wider navigation work happening across NIX too.

Spacing.

Alignment.

Margins.

Text weight.

Tap targets.

Vertical rhythm.

Tiny things individually.

Huge difference collectively.

A website usually starts looking professional when you stop noticing those details.

Everything simply feels where it belongs.

Another thing I wanted was more confidence in the typography.

NIX has always had the graphite, white and orange visual language.

But the words themselves now need to carry more visual weight.

Bigger section headings.

Cleaner hierarchy.

Stronger contrast.

Less timid spacing.

More editorial confidence.

The aim is not to make everything shout.

The aim is to make the important things impossible to miss.

Think magazine rather than template.

This is where the new system becomes interesting.

A story no longer has to follow one predictable sequence.

A future European trip story could begin with a huge satellite map.

Then a photograph of Vanilla.

Then two columns of text.

Then a fuel-cost card.

Then a drone gallery.

Then a full-width photograph from the Alps.

Then a video.

Then another little paragraph about stopping for coffee somewhere completely unexpected.

That is much closer to how memories actually work.

They are not continuous prose.

They are fragments.

Images.

Sounds.

Places.

Numbers.

Moments.

The new STORIES layout finally gives NIX a way of presenting them that way.

Stick something colourful here.

Orange would obviously help.

No pressure.

Because NIX stopped being a little drone blog a long time ago.

It has become a record of my world.

The miles.

The machines.

The photographs.

The projects.

The good ideas.

The questionable ideas.

The upgrades.

The journeys.

The music playing while all of it happens.

And if the content has become richer, the presentation should become richer too.

The new design is really about allowing all those different parts of NIX to coexist without forcing them into one rigid format.

A technical article should be able to look technical.

A travel story should feel cinematic.

A photography story should be dominated by photography.

A personal piece can be quiet and simple.

Same website.

Same identity.

Different storytelling tools.

So this particular story is deliberately a bit unusual.

It is showing the machinery while the machinery is running.

I’ll add random photographs.

Perhaps a video.

Maybe a map.

Maybe some old images.

Maybe something completely new.

And the new layout should simply absorb them and turn them into part of the story.

That is the experiment.

If it works properly, I should not have to think too much about the layout every time I publish something.

I concentrate on the story.

The site handles the choreography.

This redesign is not really about decoration.

It is about giving NIX somewhere to grow.

The adventures are getting bigger.

Vanilla keeps evolving.

Torque keeps finding trails.

The drones keep flying.

The camera keeps filling hard drives.

There is another European journey coming.

There are thousands of miles still to drive.

There are more playlists to build, more strange gadgets to test and undoubtedly several electrical projects that will somehow require a graph.

Now the website has a storytelling system capable of keeping up with all of it.

And this page is the first proper glimpse of what that looks like.

Welcome to the new NIX STORIES.

Same bloke.

Same orange.

Far better pages.