Starting that Portfolio

The first article I read on Smashing Magazine was the "69 Sexy Portfolio Designs". Not gonna lie, some of these were really busy and chaotic looking. Just viewing them in the article made me a little overwhelmed. However, I really did like a few of them, and hope they could maybe serve as a little inspiration for this next portfolio project. Among my favorites featured, I liked the Alt Design, Sahar Design, Flourish Web Design, Dubai, Newrafael, Go Media, Toy.ny and friendly duck designs to name a few. The simple but fun layouts of these really appealed to me, versus the more busy designs that were full of colors and graphics like Kidd81 and MopStudio.

After reading through the top 40 questions in "Portfolio Design Study: Design Patterns and Current Practices," I gained a little more inspiration for what may result as my portfolio website. I thought it was interesting how layouts "back in the 90s" were primarily positioned on the left side, whereas more modern layouts today are in the center, or even towards the right side of the page. I've always liked the way a centered layout looks, and had difficulty achieving this in the client project (especially in the nav bar), so maybe I'll give it another shot in this project?

As for those navigation set-ups in portfolio website designs, although I found some of the "mine sweeper" and Flash navigations charming and fun, I feel as though I may be more practical when it comes to my personal design. Not only because I feel like I don't want my audience or users getting frustrated when they're forced to go on a spontaneous scavenger hunt, but more so because I'm not entirely sure I'm that experienced when it comes to web design...... However, I did enjoy Jessica Caldwell's navigation. I thought it was very creative, yet remains user friendly.

Finally, the Showcases of Case Studies in Design Portfolios. The case studies in each portfolio website features various client projects that have been accomplished. I think this is an important aspect of the portfolio websites, and I really liked how some of the examples in this article went about presenting their work. Sunrise Design was probably one of my favorites, because they really went in depth about their work, and showed various screenshots which was cool to see.

In the end, reading through these articles really made me excited for this next project, despite the ever-growing amount of projects and stuff I have to accomplish before the semester ends...... eek....