Website Re-think

I have been working on my personal branding recently, and a portfolio website to display my work on. I thought my original website design worked well but during the easter break, i have been looking through a lot of portfolio websites and decided i should re-think my original idea.

Here is my original idea. I do like the layout and i think it works well, but i think i overcomplicated the layout. From my own experience, looking at a designers website, i would much prefer the interface and layout to be very clean and easy to navigate through. Having too many things to click on, to me, is really annoying when i want to get straight to the work. 

While i think this layout looks nice, i do think it could be much easier to navigate through and slightly overcomplicates things. I also think that since there is quite a bit to look at, it would distract from the actual work on the site, which is obviously what i want to be the main focus.

Taking this into account, i re-worked the design of the site, opting for a much cleaner, simpler layout. The image above shows the 'about' section of the site. I tried a few fonts, but i decided that 'georgia' worked really well with my logo, and was nice and easy to read. I listed all the sections on the left of the website, highlighting the selected section in a black, and taking the dot from the logo to sit next to that section.  I did keep the photograph of my desk from the previous website, as i really liked that and i think it sits nicely with the rest of the new layout.

This is an example of how the work would be displayed on the site. Again, i went with a very clean layout, with a short descriptor of the work at the top. The user would then scroll down to view whichever work has been selected, with the text at the left hand side staying stationery. 

I also designed a contact page for the site.  Looking at a lot of portfolio websites, quite a few of them didn't have an easy way for a potential client to contact them. A lot just listed a hyperlink to their email, which then would open up a new window to compose the message in. Taking this into account, i added in a simple contact section so the user could state their name, email and the enquiry. I'm not sure how hard this would be to code, but i think it would work well on my website.

Finally, I thought it would be a nice feature if i linked in my blog with the website. This image shows the blog open on the website. I would need to change the style of my blog to fit with the rest of my website (text, colour), but i think this could work well and it would be better having a built in blog, rather than having an external link opening a new window to blogger.

Overall, i am much happier with my layout. I think it will be very easy to use, and will help the user to flick through my work much quicker than my previous design. I also think this will be much easier for me to code, which was is always a worry with my inexperience in web design. While the look of the site isn't spectacular, i think it does what it needs and looks professional at the same time.

Now to make it!

-gulp-