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!
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.
“A Second Voice” Sounds Sweet
Today, mezzoblue launched a new feature that Dave Shea has named “A Second Voice.” Instead of trying to summarize what this new feature is, I’ll let Dave do the explaining:
“As a web designer you are expected to understand (if not master) every specialty that exists. Be it Information Architecture, Usability, Design, Coding, Writing, Systems Integration, or Programming, you must have a solid grasp of each specialty to do your job well. A Second Voice exists as a platform for the specialists to break down what they know into easily digestable pieces for the rest of us to chew on.”
The first article in “A Second Voice,” coming from Nic Steenhout, is titled “Accessibility: Build It, and They Will Come” and addresses some of the obstacles that the disabled have to deal with on the web, and gives reason to why designers should be concerned with addressing these obstacles. So, check it out, if for no other reason than to see the fancy new header that accompanies the “A Second Voice” pages.
Well done, Dave! What will you think of next?
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