Website Design Blog. Evoart

Some of you guys may have noticed that about a month ago I finally put the new version of my portfolio live! Designing your own website is a notoriously difficult task, but in my spell freelancing (December ‘07) I knew my old portfolio just wasn’t projecting the right message and it was definitely a time for a fresh coat of paint. So I braced myself & took the plunge…

That was way back in December 07 and the new version has only just gone live. Crazy hey?! Thats part of the problem with updating your own website - finding the time to get on and do it. I’d got the design nailed pretty quickly to be honest - it was one of those layouts that just came together as soon as I got going. I think is because this time around I put much more thought into what I wanted the site to achieve.

Anyway, here are a few of my thoughts behind why I’ve done things how I have.

Everything on one page

I had thought about this possibility for a while and after much deliberation decided to keep everything on just the one page. When I stumbled across this excellent ‘smooth scroller‘ that pretty much sealed the deal.

I know optimisation wise I’m probably shooting myself in the foot, (hell, I even had a few comments over a CSS Drive saying that very same thing) but I think the site is going to be much easier for me to update this way. Also, I seem to be ranking quite well at the moment for my keyphrase of choice. If I decide to optimise for more key phrases, it will just be a case of creating some landing pages, so I think I’ve got most bases covered.

Layout

Although Authentic Style is pretty much a two column layout, I wanted to try something a little more adventurous by displaying sections which had a substantial amount of text in columns with some nicely styled headings. I’m really fond of designs that take elements from printed material, such as magazines and newspapers, so I thought I’d have a go at taking a tiny little bit of inspiration from those and introduce them into my design.

Having all the white space on the lefthand side underneath the title of each section was also something I had decided upon from the outset as well. I wanted to show off my examples of work and the use of space achieves this (i hope!). I remember a designer once telling me that white space creates confidence, and shows your not scared to give your design room to breathe.

Social Networking

Social Networking is really important these days. Up until a few months back I hadn’t really seen the benefit of it, but after using services like Twitter, LinkedIn and DeviantArt it is definitely beneficial to try and develop some contacts in a similar field to yourself.

Since my portfolio went live loads of people began to follow me on Twitter, and watch me on Deviant Art, so that can’t be a bad thing to get your name out ‘there’ a bit more. You just never know where it might lead, and following people on Twitter can be quite fun anyway, which is an added bonus.

Galleries and Traffic

If you haven’t read my post ‘Using CSS Galleries to your advantage‘ check it out! The gist of the article is that getting your site listed in a few galleries will send you a tonne of traffic!

This new version of Authentic Style got picked up by most of the major galleries, and its resulted in over 29,000 unique visitors and lots of enquiries for work (of which unfortunatly I cannot take any). Still, its always nice to receive a bit of recognition.

All in all, pretty chuffed…

I’ll be the first to admit that there were stages in the development of the new Authentic Style site where I wasn’t sure how it might be recieved. However, I’m really glad to say that overall the reaction has been very positive indeed and I’m chuffed to bits.

Designing your own portfolio is always a huge challenge, and one which every designer must face. I’d love to hear the problems you faced, or how you tacked the design and development of your own portfolio, so please leave your thoughts in the comments below.