Web Design - Overview

I had an awful sense of de ja vu when I first looked at this brief. I’ve done a little web design in the past, and I remember the frustration  as being enough to etch a new stress line into my forehead. However, I’m pleased to say that this time my experience is a completely different one.

I’ve had a portfolio website before as an amateur, but I never really enjoyed much success with it. My techniques and software knowledge at the time were quite cumbersome and rudimentary. So I decided I should try and start with a clean slate this time. Try and apply some of what I have learned in my time back in eduation.

            The idea behind the website was to create something that marks me instantly as an illustrator, but still retain some ambiguity as to what my work is about. I decided that if I was going to have something hand drawn on the website, that I would want the rest of the site to be simple and clean. But the website would center around this illustration. Encouraging the visitor to explore. It would have to be interactive, which I achieved easily with simple rollovers.

            My usual preferred colour scheme is a dark one, so I stuck with it . It’s something that has always seemed to speak of me. I chose the orange colour because I had tried it on my blog and it had worked quite well on top of the dark grey. It was easy to theme my site around this restricted palette, because it all follows a similar visual language.

            Also one new thing to me is blogging. I’m very lax when it comes to publishing online, and keeping a blog has made me realise that. One thing that has put me off it is the fact that I haven’t figured out how to put the blog itself onto my site. I think once it is integrated in one of the pages it will encourage me to use it

             But the main thing now is that i have gone from an idea that i've always wanted to use but never realised, to having something tangible that i can further modify to my needs. I've managed to bag a name and a theme that i enjoy, one that i think is unique. It's starting to feel good to have an online presence again.