A journal kept by a working designer

Hello — I am Mara Ellison. For fifteen years I have designed websites for studios, startups and the occasional stubborn institution, and for the last eight I have written down what the work teaches me.

Marrowfield Journal is that notebook, tidied up and published a fortnight at a time. It covers the craft of web design, the strategy of branding, and the unglamorous business skills — presenting, pricing, persisting — that decide whether good work survives contact with the real world.

What I believe

Fast pages beat fancy pages. Honest interfaces beat clever ones. Taste is built, not born, and the best way to learn is to publish your process where beginners can find it.

Everything here is free, written by a person, and argued from experience rather than trends. When I am wrong — which happens — I say so in the next essay.