My New Portfolio
I’m looking to start doing some freelance design work and/or find a full-time web design position, so I figured it was time I built a legitimate portfolio website. I had an awesome time designing it and I learned a lot about jQuery and Ajax along the way. Anyways, check it out!
If you know anyone that needs some work done or is looking to hire a web designer, please do pass along my site. I’d much appreciate it. Thanks!
My Blog’s Personality
I just ran my website through Typealyzer, a tool that calculates your Myers-Briggs Type Indicator based on the content of your blog. According to the website, “When all features, words and sentences, are statistically analyzed, Typealyzer is able to guess which personality type the text represents.”
I assume it’s only analyzing the front page, so it might not be very reliable. However, at the time of submitting my site, the homepage was filled with content that is extremely reflective of my writing style and interests: a science/tech/futurist-related essay, an article related to the design of this website, a post about a movie trailer, and a few short blurbs regarding some of my photographs.
After a few seconds, Typealyzer declared the author of this blog (me) to be an INTP: Introverted iNtuitive Thinking Perceiving. Considering that this website is in many ways the digitized contents of my brain, I wasn’t surprised that Typealyzer was spot on. I Googled INTP and found this: Portrait of an INTP. INTPs are called the “Thinkers,” and I’ve extracted a few of the descriptions that I found to be very accurate, as if they were written just for me.
- INTPs live in the world of theoretical possibilities. They see everything in terms of how it could be improved, or what it could be turned into.
- They seek clarity in everything, and are therefore driven to build knowledge.
- They love new ideas, and become very excited over abstractions and theories. They love to discuss these concepts with others. They may seem “dreamy” and distant to others, because they spend a lot of time inside their minds musing over theories.
- The INTP is likely to be very shy when it comes to meeting new people. On the other hand, the INTP is very self-confident and gregarious around people they know well, or when discussing theories which they fully understand.
- The INTP is usually very independent, unconventional, and original. They are not likely to place much value on traditional goals such as popularity and security.
Typealyzer also drew up this visual analysis that shows the parts of the brain that were dominant during writing.
Again, quite accurate, particularly the almost 50/50 division between practical and idealist. Anyways, give Typealyzer a try. I’m curious if it works as well for anyone else.
Problems and Solutions
Last night, I poked around the site a bit, making some changes here and there. Thought I’d share them with you, as well as the thought processes behind some of the updates. A great way to learn is simply to look at what someone else did and why they did it.
The biggest change is the new background. I’ve been achin’ for something to replace the pale beige tile I was using since this design, Sangria, launched last June. It wasn’t that I didn’t like the pattern I’d been using; quite the contrary, I liked it very much. It had a translucent, lace-like quality that I thought suited the other subtleties of the design quite well. However, I wanted something with more of a visual punch.
Over the past few months, I tried a lot of alternatives, but nothing ever looked or felt just right. Or, at least, nothing ever looked quite as right as the old pattern did. There’s no one, perfect answer to any design problem. There are simply solutions, and then solutions that are better. The tile pattern was the best solution I had found thus far. Still, I sought something better.
Last night, inspired by this post at Web Designer Wall, I went digging through Lightroom for some photographs that might work as a background image. I really like the texture and tonal variety that a giant, photographic background can bring to a website, so I looked for photos that were abstract and kind of simple: close-ups, long exposures, that sort of thing. I didn’t want images that were very representational because they would only distract from the website itself. After digging through thousands of photographs, this is the collection I had gathered.
Nine Point Oh, or Sangria
Holy crap, it’s finally up. I am very proud to introduce Version 9.0, a design that has been about two months in the making. At least 17 designs were scrapped in the process, including a few that made it all the way from scribble to Photoshop mock-up to fully-functional website. If you’d like, you can call her Sangria — the link colors remind me of oranges and red wine.
I wanted the site to be outfitted in a look that stays out of the way of the content, but is extremely designed at the same time. That’s what I feel I have achieved with Sangria. I realize that these days a lot of people remain within the confines of their feed reader, but I hope that the new design encourages them to pay the site a visit every so often.
A couple months ago, while brainstorming in my notebook, I jotted down phrases like “emphasis on beautiful typography,” “minimalism and lots of white space,” “let the content speak for itself.” After weeks of revising and perfecting the design, I feel that I have finally reached those goals. Taking advice from “Design is in the Details” over at A List Apart, I obsessed over every facet of the site, analyzing it at various times and in various settings, removing anything deemed unnecessary or superfluous. I am very happy with the results and can’t wait to start filling the site with fresh content.
I plan on writing a more detailed recap of the design process in the coming days, so keep an eye out. I learned so much over the last two months, and would love to share that knowledge with the rest of you.
If you guys come across any bugs or glitches, I’d greatly appreciate it if you left a note in the comments. On many occasions, I didn’t make it to bed until the sky had begun to brighten and my brain had started to fry, so I know there’s a mistake or two somewhere.
That’s all for now.
Changes, big and bigger
After years of using MovableType to manage the site’s content, I have finally made the jump to WordPress! MovableType, while very customizable, was always getting in the way of my creativity and never very easy to work with when I needed to make changes to the look or structure of the site. WordPress was an instant winner, in my eyes, and I finally found the time (not to mention courage) to take on the task of moving the entire site. I now use it to manage every page on the site, and while there is still a lot of work to be done until all the bugs are worked out (mostly stuff regarding permalinks), I am extremely pleased with WordPress and its powerful simplicity. I think Zeldman put it best when he said that it simply “stays out of the way.”
The other big change, one that should have been made a long time ago, is that all photos are now uploaded to Flickr and served up on the site. For years now I have battled by my lonesome with image resizing, thumbnail creation, tagging, and all the other work that it takes simply to get a photo up on the site. I am ecstatic to have Flickr now taking care of all of this for me, and there’s no doubt in my mind that this will have me posting a great deal more photos than I ever have in the past.
I have decided to update every entry to reflect my using Flickr now, not only for consistency but also because in the past I created photos with a 550 pixel width and Flickr, instead, creates an image that is 500 pixels wide. This is obviously a time-consuming process, involving finding and uploading the originals of each photograph, then changing each photo’s respective entry on the site, however I plan on having it done in the next few days.
As I said, there are a lot of small details and bugs left to work out, so don’t be surprised if things seem off in certains corners of the site. I have hundreds of photographs from my recent trip to London and Paris and simply couldn’t wait to share them, so I wanted to get the site back up as soon as I could, even if it was a little buggy still. Feel free to report anything you notice in the comments of this entry. Thanks!
Here I am, Once again
First came version 1.0 – “The Trials & Tribulations of a Young Designer”. The stuff I wrote about usually had nothing to do with my trials, tribulations, or the fact that I was relatively young (around 16 years old). When I started posting photographs and realized that I was basically writing about anything that was design-related, I moved the site into version 2.0. The new tagline? “Everything Design”. Original, I know.
Eventually I grew tired of writing. So I stopped. And version 3.0 was born. Now a photoblog, the site’s tagline read, “Living Life One Photo at a Time”. Ouch. Thankfully a few months later I realized that the tagline was cheesy as hell, so I dropped it, redesigned, and had version 4.0 – a pink and green design that stuck for quite a while. Then purple became the new pink, so I updated to 4.1. Version 5.0 came about mostly as a need for change. Since then, my posting habits have wavered, much to everyone else’s attention.
So now comes version 6.0 – a bit more grown up, an added touch of sarcasm, and, most of all, more focused than ever. The new design reflects a realignment of my goals and interests, away from “everything design” and towards professional photography, film, and cinematography. Face it: I am a film major that wants to direct music videos, and the old site format simply didn’t communicate or allow for that.
Anyways, I hope you guys dig the new look. There’s still a bunch of refinements to be made, so if you come across a dead link or a poorly-styled page, turn around and try back later.
Total Revamp
You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that I no longer have the time or motivation to update my blog. Just look at the numbers:
- April 2004 … 1 entry
- March 2004 … 3 entries
- February 2004 … 1 entry
- January 2004 … 4 entries
On the otherhand, you may have (and I hope that you have) noticed that my interest in shooting and posting new photographs has not dwindled a bit.
Putting two and two together, I came to the conclusion that it was time for me to stop trying to be something I’m not: a writer. I am a designer… a photographer… a creator. Therefore, sometime in the next week I will be converting AdamPolselli.com into a photo blog. So as not to completely do away with textual content, as I think that it is an important part of staying in touch with your readers, each entry will have a short paragraph or two, perhaps describing the the photo, mentioning a color scheme that can be derived from the photo, or just making a little note about life itself.
Before I can launch the new design, I need all of ya’ll’s help. What do I do with this site? I definitely don’t want to just trash it, and I would like to keep it live so that people can still access the content. Simply moving the content to a different location could be a problem because all of the links will break. What do I do?!
I truly appreciate all of the support and encouragement throughout the past year, and I hope that all of you will stick with me as AdamPolselli.com becomes a photo blog.
Sincerely,
Me
NOTE: I just saw that you can set your archives to save into a different location. For the new site, should I simply have the archives save somewhere else and allow the current archives to stay in place?
Evolution
So, what’s the excuse this time, you ask? Lack of inspiration. Period. End of sentence. Let’s just continue as if nothing ever happened…
A good friend, Marc James, was caring enough to ask me what was up with the site, and his concern was enough to get me up and moving again. Over the next couple weeks, the site will likely be experiencing some changes that are necessary on my part to keep me interested and having fun. Expect experimentations, trials and errors, and, as the title states, a little bit of evolution. My goal is to help you, the readers, enjoy the site, have fun, and take at least a little something away from it.
I’m thinking more photos, more color, more out-of-the-box thinking, etcetera. Here’s to all of you that stuck around throughout my abscence, and to a whole lot of fun to come! Thanks!