The Why
Welcome! After almost half a year of hard work, I am excited to release my very anticipated (by me at least) new and very much improved personal portfolio. Filed with my recent projects, info about me, and just about every shower thought and opinion I have about current trends.
My first portfolio was initially created in late 2022 while on Christmas break at my parents house. With my college graduation and job applications approaching fast, I wanted to create a website showcasing all of my past work. Having little programming and web design experience, I set a challenge to learn to code and create my first website. Little did I know, what started as a fun project to pass the time would soon result in a never ending obsession that would consume all my free time and brain space.
The Process
Im not going to sugar coat it, my first website was by no means perfect. With no real web design and development experience, my hopes were definitely set too high. The result? A website that roughly matched my visions with more bugs than the Australian Outback.
My first site was built on WordPress, and while I had funning adding custom coded hover interactions and hidden easter eggs like "the Button", much of the site did not function or look like how I was anticipating. The UX/UI was lacking, and my projected and about info were outdated due to a poorly designed backend. For my new portfolio, I knew i wanted a few main things. A clean and timeless design that met my expectations, a well built out back end that allowed me to easily update projects and other info, and of course, I wanted it to contain more up-to-date information including all of my current and past projects.
The first step was to create a detailed wireframe in Figma. This proved to be a crucial aspect, as it allowed me to quickly and easily mockup design ideas. When it came to the actual development of my website, I wanted to use a platform that gave me the most freedom as possible while still being fairly user friendly, which is why I landed on Webflow. With a design and platform in place, I began building.
The Challenges
Amongst the many challanges I faced a main road block of mine was Webflow itself. While I had some web design experience at this point, I had little experience with Webflow specifically. The first 1-2 months were dedicated directly to learning how to use the platform, and navigate its many features such as responsiveness and CMS capabilities. After surpassing that hurdle I was immediately faced with the site design itself. Because I like torturing myself, I soon realized that my site design was much more complex than it had initially looked. Utilizing the many forums, YouTube videos and CodePens's, after 5 months I had finally completed my website and could start filling it with all the fun stuff like projects, info about me and of course brain dumps like the one you are reading right now!
The Results
The results speak for themself! After months of hard work creating the site and filling it with content. I am relieved and excited to be finished. Having completed this project, I now have a better understanding of design principles along with the many new skills I gained from creating a ground up identity and site. Enjoy the website and projects, if you have any questions or comments feel free to reach out and I would be happy to talk further! :)