nixdrones.com

NIX DRONES did not begin with a design agency, a stack of wireframes or somebody in a black polo shirt talking about “brand journeys”.

It began with a simple thought.

I wanted somewhere to put all my stuff.

Drone photography. Campervan trips. Bike rides. Technology. Solar power. Cameras. Maps. Stories. Photographs. The occasional ridiculous experiment.

At first, the website was really just a collection of those things.

Then something changed.

I stopped asking:

“What else can I add?”

and started asking:

“What should NIX DRONES actually feel like?”

That changed everything.

The visual identity developed around the things I already liked.

Dark graphite backgrounds.

Indium Grey.

White typography.

The idea was never to make another busy hobby website filled with boxes, menus and flashing buttons.

I wanted it to feel cinematic.

Clean.

Confident.

Almost like opening an operating system rather than visiting a conventional website.

There is a bit of Apple influence in there, certainly. Big photographs, strong typography, space around things and an obsession with making the interface disappear behind the content.

But NIX has gradually developed its own character.

It is darker.

More mechanical.

A little more industrial.

Part photography portfolio, part travel journal, part engineering notebook and part digital shed.

And that suits me perfectly.

One of the biggest changes was realising that the homepage did not need to explain everything.

It needed to make you want to explore.

Large cinematic photographs became the background.

Images rotate and transition rather than sitting lifelessly on the page.

The photography does much of the talking.

The NIX DRONES logo stays still.

The world behind it moves.

That distinction became important.

The site should feel alive without looking as though it is trying too hard.

Animation is useful when it creates atmosphere.

Animation for the sake of animation is just digital fidgeting.

Fewer Menus. More Discovery.

For a while, the site kept growing.

And growing.

And growing.

Every new idea created another page.

Every new page created another menu item.

Eventually I realised I was building the internet equivalent of one of those kitchen drawers containing batteries, string, three screwdrivers and seventeen things nobody can identify.

So the philosophy changed.

The visible website became simpler.

The deeper parts of NIX DRONES are still there, but you discover them naturally.

I started calling them wormholes.

A photograph might take you into a trip.

A bike story might lead into TRAIL.

A campervan article might open ROAD.

A drone image might send you into SKY.

Instead of presenting visitors with a giant directory, the site encourages wandering.

That is much closer to how memories actually work.

One thing leads to another.

SKY. TRAIL. ROAD. KITCHEN. PHOTO.

Eventually the website began organising itself into little worlds.

SKY became the home of drones and aerial photography.

TRAIL became everything connected with Torque, my e-bike, routes and riding.

ROAD became Vanilla, campervan travel and the engineering rabbit holes associated with owning a VW Transporter.

PHOTO became photography in all its forms.

And KITCHEN appeared because apparently owning drones and a campervan inevitably leads to experimenting with ginger shots and strange drinks.

That is one of the things I like most about NIX DRONES.

It does not have to fit neatly into one category.

Neither do I.

One of my favourite ideas has been NIX // ATLAS.

Rather than treating journeys as individual blog posts, ATLAS starts joining them together.

Routes.

Distances.

Weeks.

Months.

Years.

European trips.

Campervan journeys.

Bike rides.

Eventually the map becomes something bigger than navigation.

It becomes a visual record of movement.

Orange lines gradually spreading across a dark map.

A personal history drawn in kilometres.

I especially wanted the maps themselves to remain simple.

No forest of unnecessary pins.

No control panel requiring pilot training.

Just the route.

The road travelled.

That is enough.

Another important breakthrough was realising that Flickr could do far more than simply store photographs.

It could become part of the website’s content system.

The idea is beautifully simple.

The Flickr photograph is the visual.

The Flickr title becomes the headline.

The Flickr description becomes the story.

The Flickr album becomes the section.

The Flickr tags create the connections.

Suddenly a photograph was not just decoration.

It carried information with it.

Click an image on NIX DRONES and the photograph can open large, with its proper title, description and context.

That means I can update much of the site’s photographic storytelling simply by looking after Flickr properly.

It also means the website does not need artificial intelligence constantly generating descriptions or rebuilding pages.

The information already exists.

Use it.

Simple technology usually wins.

As the site developed, another principle became important.

AI is brilliant for creating, planning and improving things.

But normal website activity should remain normal website activity.

Opening pages.

Reading stories.

Displaying photographs.

Showing maps.

Editing blog posts.

Publishing articles.

Changing titles.

Uploading images.

Those things should work through reliable website code.

The clever technology should be used where it genuinely adds something.

That keeps the website faster, simpler and more dependable.

And, in a slightly amusing twist, one of the smartest parts of building NIX DRONES has been learning when the website does not need to be clever at all.

The blog editor was another major step.

Originally, making changes could feel like working on the website itself.

Now the goal is different.

I should be able to open an admin page, write a story, add photographs, drop in a YouTube link, preview it and press Publish.

The site should do the formatting.

YouTube links should become videos.

Photographs should arrange themselves properly.

The design system should take care of the rest.

Because ultimately I want to spend time creating stories.

Not adjusting margins.

Another lesson came from using the website on a phone.

A desktop design can look magnificent and still turn into a furniture removal job when squeezed onto a mobile screen.

So NIX DRONES has gradually become more mobile-aware.

Menus have been simplified.

Buttons have disappeared where they were not useful.

Typography has been adjusted.

Images have been allowed to breathe.

Transitions have become smoother.

The objective is that the phone version should not feel like a reduced desktop website.

It should feel designed for the phone.

Fluid, Not Flashy

That has become one of the central rules of NIX DRONES.

Fluid, not flashy.

Pages should glide rather than jump.

Images should reveal themselves naturally.

Navigation should respond instantly.

Maps should move smoothly.

Buttons should feel tactile.

Nothing should shout:

“LOOK AT THIS CLEVER WEBSITE EFFECT.”

The best interface is often the bit you stop noticing.

You simply use it.

It is difficult to describe NIX DRONES as just a website now.

It has become a record of the things I enjoy.

Vanilla.

Torque.

Drones.

Photography.

Journeys.

Technology.

Solar experiments.

Projects.

Mistakes.

Ideas.

And quite a lot of orange.

Somewhere along the way it stopped being a collection of webpages and became something closer to a personal digital world.

A place where a photograph can become a story.

A route can become a memory.

A campervan electrical graph can somehow become interesting.

And a random idea on a Wednesday evening can end up with its own section by Thursday morning.

That is probably the most NIX thing about the whole project.

It is never really finished.

And I don’t think I want it to be.

SKY // TRAIL // ROAD // PHOTO // KITCHEN // ATLAS

Built from journeys.

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