My own name now sits in black and white, and for the first time that feels like a choice, not a hiding place.
How it started
This week my website became black and white. No navy, no red, no colour at all.
If you have read The Monday CC for a while, you know that sentence is not small for me. I spent 26 years drawing only in black and white, and I spent the last two years learning to love colour again. So why would I take every colour off my own website?
This is the story behind albandari.net: when it began, what it looked like, how many times I changed it and why I finally chose to strip it back to two colours.
In the beginning albandari.net was simply a home for my name. A place where people could find me after reading a post on X, or hearing about my book, Expel the Pain.
I am a graphic designer. I have built brand systems for other people for 20 years. And like most designers, I treated my own brand the way a carpenter treats her own kitchen. Always next week.
The designer who never designs for herself
There is a joke among designers that the cobbler's children have no shoes. We spend our days making other people look clear, confident and whole, and our own websites stay half finished for years.
I used to laugh at that joke. Then I looked at my own folders.
I had brand guides for other people with every colour written down to the last digit. I had logo files in every size, for every background, named neatly. For myself, I had a few screenshots, an old logo I no longer liked and a long list of "one day" ideas.
When I am designing for someone else, I can see them clearly. I know what to keep and what to cut. I am not afraid of their story, because it is not mine.
When I design for myself, every choice feels like a confession. Pick a colour, and you are saying something about how you feel. Pick a font, and you are deciding how your voice sounds. Write one line about yourself, and you are choosing which version of you the world meets first.
That is why my site changed so many times. Not because I could not design it, but because I kept changing my mind about who was standing behind it.
When I design for myself, every choice feels like a confession.
The first version: navy, red and a storm
The version most of you saw was deep navy with a bright red accent. Navy for the night sky, red for the lifebuoy. My name was written in the Airways script I love, with a small red line under it, like a signature at the end of a letter.
That site told one story: From storm to bloom. It had a page about the storm, a waiting list, my portfolio and a free tool I called the Inner Weather Map, for anyone who wanted to name their own highs and lows. Every page came in English and Arabic, and every page ended with the same line: lived experience, not medical advice.
I loved it. I still do. It was the first time I let myself use strong colour on something that carried my name, and it felt brave.
But love and clarity are not the same thing. Slowly, the site was asked to do more and more.
What the old site taught me
I do not regret the navy and red version. It taught me three things I could not have learned any other way.
First, colour carries a mood whether you want it to or not. Navy is calm, but it is also night. Red is courage, but it is also alarm. On the days I was well, the site felt like a lighthouse. On the days I was not, I could not look at it for long. A website you cannot bear to open on your hard days is not really your home.
Second, a story needs an ending. From storm to bloom is a beautiful promise, but it made the whole site feel like it was waiting for something. Waiting lists, coming soon, sign up to hear more. I was building a bridge to a place I had not arrived at yet.
Third, every page I added made the book harder to find. The book is the thing I am most proud of. It is the thing people ask me about most. And yet a new visitor had to scroll past an explainer, a free tool and a portfolio before they reached it.
None of these were mistakes, exactly. They were drafts. You need drafts before you know what you are writing.
One site, one job
Over time, albandari.net became a drawer I kept throwing things into. The book, my art, my portfolio, a waiting list, a free tool, new ideas I was testing. Every new thing felt important, so every new thing got a place on the homepage.
The result was a site where a visitor had to work out who I was before they could do anything. Was this an author? An artist? A designer? And where exactly do I buy the book?
I tell the people I design for this all the time: when a brand tries to say everything, it says nothing clearly. It took me a while to hear my own advice.
When a brand tries to say everything, it says nothing clearly.
So this week I gave albandari.net one job. It is the home of my book, Expel the Pain. Its editions, the price, how to get a copy and the person who wrote it. Everything else I removed. Not deleted from my life, only moved out of the way.
It felt like closing a lot of doors. It turned out to be opening one, wide.
What I took off the homepage, and why it was hard
Removing things is the hardest part of any redesign. Every section on a page was added on a day when it felt necessary. Taking it away feels like telling that version of yourself she was wrong.
I took off the storm explainer. I took off the waiting list. I took off the free tool, my art gallery and my design portfolio. Some of these I spent weeks on.
I did not throw them away. They are saved, and some of them will come back in the right place at the right time. But they do not belong on the page whose only job is to introduce a book.
The test I used was simple. For every section, I asked: if someone lands here for the first time, does this help them understand the book or get a copy? If the answer was no, it left. Even if I loved it. Especially if I loved it, because love is exactly what makes us keep things too long.
Love is exactly what makes us keep things too long.
What stayed is short. The book and what it is about. The editions and their prices. A few lines about me. The places you can find me. The policies, written plainly. That is all.
The first time I scrolled through the finished page from top to bottom, it took less than a minute. I sat back and felt something I had not felt about my own website in a long time. Relief.
Why black and white
When I sat down to redesign albandari.net, I opened my colour picker out of habit. Navy again? Something softer? A new accent for a new chapter?
Then I closed it.
The book was written in the years when I lived in black and white. Every page of Expel the Pain comes from that place: the storm, the stillness, the long nights with a pencil and no colour. Dressing it in bright colours felt like telling the story in someone else's voice.
Black and white is also honest in a way colour is not. There is nothing to hide behind. The words have to carry the page. If the writing is good, you feel it. If it is not, no accent colour will save it.
And there is one more reason, a quieter one. I know now that black and white was never only sadness for me. It was focus. It was the place I went back to after every high and every low. In 2023 I wrote that the CC in The Monday CC is a default state to return to. My website is now that default state, in visual form.
Black and white was never only sadness for me. It was focus.
There is exactly one thing on the site in full colour: the cover of the book. It is the only thing I want your eye to land on. Everything else steps back so it can speak.
I also gave the site two moods, because a person is not one colour either. There is a black version and a white version, and a small switch at the top lets you choose. Same words, same book, different light. You pick the one that fits your day.
The questions I asked before choosing
When a client comes to me, I never start with colours. I start with questions. This time I made myself sit in the client's chair and answer them honestly.
Who is this for? Someone who has heard about Expel the Pain and wants to know if it is for them. Maybe they live with bipolar disorder. Maybe someone they love does. Maybe they are simply curious. They are probably reading on a phone, maybe late at night.
What do they need to feel? Safe. Not sold to. Not overwhelmed. A page about a book on mental health should not shout, flash or rush anyone.
What do they need to do? Understand the book in a few seconds, choose an edition and know exactly what happens next.
What should they remember? The cover, the title and a name.
When I read my answers back, the design was already there. Safe, quiet and clear is not navy and red. It is black and white, with plenty of space, and one image in colour.
I find this again and again in my work. Most design decisions are not really about taste. They are about listening carefully to the person on the other side of the screen.
Type is a voice: choosing the fonts
When you take colour away, typography has to do the talking. In a black and white design, the shape of the letters is the personality.
For English, I chose Playfair Display for headings. It has high contrast between thick and thin strokes, like ink from a pen that has pressed a little harder on the downstroke. It feels literary without feeling old. For the body text I chose Inter, a clean and quiet font made for screens, so long paragraphs stay easy to read on a phone at midnight.
For Arabic, I chose Amiri for headings. It carries the long tradition of Arabic book printing, with the elegance of Naskh. For body text, IBM Plex Sans Arabic, which is calm, modern and very readable in small sizes.
I never let the two languages share a line. Arabic and English have different rhythms. They even read in opposite directions, and squeezing them side by side makes both feel cramped. So the site shows one language at a time, with a button at the top to switch. Each language gets the whole page to itself.
There is no script font on the book's site at all. I keep my Airways signature for my letters and social media. On the book's page my name is set plainly, because the book should be the voice there, not my signature.
The small details nobody sees
A designer's website is mostly decisions you will never notice. Here are a few I made this week, because this letter is about what happens backstage.
The letter A. The logo is now a single capital A, upright, in Playfair Display. I tried it in italics first and it felt like it was rushing somewhere. Upright, it just stands there, calm. The same A is my profile picture on every account, so you can recognise me at a glance.
Two languages, never mixed. Every page exists in English and Arabic, but you only see one at a time. English uses Playfair Display and Inter. Arabic uses Amiri and IBM Plex Sans Arabic. Each language gets its own rhythm instead of being squeezed next to the other.
No lonely words. I went through every heading and paragraph so that no line ends with one word sitting alone. You will never notice it. You would notice if I had not done it.
The order of the books. The first card is the Arabic print edition, because you can order it today. Then the English e-book, which comes with a thank-you letter designed with your name. Then the signed copy, with a watercolour bookmark and a small surprise inside. Both are coming soon. The page shows what you can have now before it shows what you can wait for.
A human way to reach me. Every page ends with my phone number and email instead of a contact form. If something goes wrong with an order, I would rather you talk to me than to a machine.
Even the error page. If you follow a broken link, you do not land on a cold message. You land on a page in the same black and white, with one button that brings you back to the book.
Writing the words: the copy behind the design
People think a website is mostly design. Most of the work on mine was writing.
I rewrote the line under the book's title more times than I can count. I wanted it to tell you what the book is in one breath, without drama and without hiding anything. In the end, it says what is true: 21 years with bipolar disorder, written honestly.
I set myself a few small rules, the same ones I use in all my writing now:
- Plain words. If a simpler word exists, use it. Nobody should need a dictionary to buy a book.
- Capitals only where a sentence starts. Shouting headlines do not belong on a page about healing.
- Commas, not dots, between things. It reads more like a person talking and less like a menu.
- Western digits everywhere, in both languages. A price should look the same whether you read the page in Arabic or English.
- No lonely last words. If a line ends with one word on its own, I rewrite or rebalance it.
- One honest line at the end of every page. "Lived experience, not medical advice." I am a writer and an artist, not a doctor, and I never want anyone to confuse the two.
Even the buttons got this care. A button says exactly what will happen when you press it: "Order the print copy", not "Buy now" or "Click here". When something is not ready yet, it says so plainly: "Coming soon". No fake countdowns, no pressure.
What the redesign taught me about myself
I expected this redesign to be a technical job. A few new pages, a new checkout, a new colour scheme. It turned out to be one of the more personal things I have done this year.
I learned that I had been treating my own name as a waiting room. A place where things were always about to happen: a launch, a list, a new chapter. I did not let it simply be what it already is. And that is enough. I wrote a book. It is published. People can hold it.
I learned that simplicity is not the same as emptiness. For years black and white meant absence to me, the colours I could not reach. This time it meant the opposite. It meant I had nothing to prove, so I did not need to decorate.
I learned that boundaries are a design tool. Deciding what does not belong on a page is as important as deciding what does. Saying no to good ideas protected the one idea that matters most.
And I learned, again, the thing my illness has been teaching me for 21 years. A steady place is not a lack of feeling. It is the ground that lets you feel everything else without falling. My website is now a steady place. I hope it feels like one for you too.
A steady place is not a lack of feeling. It is the ground that lets you feel everything else without falling.
If you are rebuilding your own corner
Many of you have your own small corner online. A shop, a portfolio, a newsletter, a page with your name on it. If you have been meaning to fix it for months, here is what I would tell you, as a designer and as someone who just went through it.
- Write down the one job. One sentence. "This page exists so that people can ___." If you cannot finish the sentence, do not open a design tool yet.
- Imagine one real visitor. Not "everyone". One person, on a phone, arriving for the first time. What do they need in the first five seconds?
- Remove before you add. Go through every section and ask whether it helps that one visitor do that one job. Save what you remove somewhere safe, so letting go feels less final.
- Choose fewer colours than you think. Two or three are usually enough. Let one thing on the page carry the colour, and let everything else support it.
- Choose fonts by voice, not by fashion. Read your main sentence out loud, then pick the letters that sound like you saying it.
- Make it calm on your worst day. Open your page when you are tired or low. If it overwhelms you, it will overwhelm your visitors too.
- Let it be finished. A clear, simple page that is live today is worth more than a perfect one that is always coming soon.
You do not need a new brand. Most of the time you need a smaller one, and the courage to stand behind it.
A song for this chapter
While I was rebuilding the site, I wrote a song. I did not plan it. It arrived the way some of my paintings arrive, all at once and asking to be finished.
It is called Bloom Anyway. It begins where this letter begins, with twenty-six winters in black and white, and it ends with colour that stays even when the sky does not clear.
So bloom anyway, bloom anyway, in the middle of a cloudy day, you don't need the sky to clear to let your colours stay.
Play it while you scroll through albandari.net in black and white. That is how I listened to it the night I finished the site.
What comes next
The signed copies are almost ready. When they are, the button will appear on albandari.net, and you will hear it here first.
The English e-book is on its way too. I am taking my time with it, because translating a book about your own mind is a strange thing. Every sentence has to be lived twice.
And colour has not left my life. It has simply moved. It lives in my paintings and in the work I make for other people. My own name now sits in black and white, and for the first time that feels like a choice, not a hiding place.
If you visit albandari.net this week, try the switch at the top. Read it in black, then in white. Tell me which one you chose, and why. I am curious what your day looks like.
Until next Monday,
Albandari