Small design project.
Revamp of my online presence.
This mainly involved re-designing the layout of the three blog addresses (one of which is acting as a front page for the portfolio) as touching up some of the peripheral profiles like vimeo and youtube.
The aims:
Create a unified front.
Eliminate the growing disorganisation.
Easy navigation through the various projects.
Best work shown first.
Provide depth to satisfy anyone with an urge to dig through all the work.
The constraints:
Keep the pages within blogspot - expansion to an independent web site is not yet necessary.
Allow for easy addition of work.
Has to be shown consistently across differing devices.
The constraints of designing through blogspot frameworks did not seem to allow starting from scratch unless I was to commit to learning the code involved in creating a personal structure. As a result my decision was to find the most minimal frame that would still allow sufficient information to be displayed.
With the various links, labels, projects and accessories for both the portfolio and honours sites laid out I set about eliminating all but the necessary.
This left both sites with a set of links to further aspects of my 'online self' - 'LinkedIn', 'Vimeo', 'YouTube' and 'Twitter'. Also a short description of who I am, a contact email and Pages describing the content of the sites. Also a static decorative background, as had been used previously, was out as it created inconsistencies across differing devices and is an unnecessary extra.
As blogspot does not allow for a static home page I used a second portfolio site to act as one. Fortunately this address was free: IJM.blogspot.com. The design and layout is identical to the full portfolio so they appear as one. The honours site is identical in layout but differs in content keeping the unified look.
The blog posts allow for digging whereas the far more simple and clearly laid out pages to 'Motion graphics', 'Photography', 'Photoshop', 'Stop motion' and 'Web comics' allow the best work to be shown more prominently.
Further clarity for navigation arises from the red colour being reserved for linked text. The colour scheme began as black and white with red added to accentuate the links. In this case there is no theory behind the choice of red, it only 'felt right'. Perhaps a study into colour theory my uncover subconscious reasoning.
Missing from Guanaco on Vimeo.