It has come to my attention that I tweak my portfolio’s aesthetics far more frequently than I update its actual content1. It has also come to my attention that every single portfolio site on the entire internet uses Lightbox to display images2. I discovered both of these things during a web design lesson I guest taught for an ex-professor’s Design Issues course when half of the class asked me to explain Lightbox implementation and I used my own portfolio as an example.
Don’t get me wrong, Lightbox is great, but it’s current ubiquity diminishes my portfolio’s uniqueness. And for a site that’s meant to win the hearts of clients, that really won’t do. So now what?
Well, first, the dilemmas.
Clicking vs. Scrolling
Right now, I’m in sort of a middle ground. Each family of thumbnails fits quit comfortably on most modern displays, with scrolling required to travel from section to section, and full size images viewable by either clicking on each thumbnail or clicking one thumbnail in a family and cycling through via Lightbox. I’d like to move more towards one or the other to simplify navigation. Given the current layout’s relatively narrow width3, I’m inclined to go with scrolling. Ok, let’s do that. First problem solved.
Diversity vs. Focus
Unfortunately, the majority of the pieces shown in my portfolio are either outdated (the oldest thing on there was designed four years ago) or irrelevant to my working goals. Nine out of twenty total pieces are illustrations, and let’s be honest, illustration is a hobby for me, not a profession. Almost everything I have in the Design section was either done for school or as a personal exercise. Since web design is the profession I’ve decided to stick to, I need to cut back on the presence of both my illustration work and non-web related design work. Ideally, I should probably allow my web work to stand on its own, but I don’t think I’ve done enough to cut the other sections completely.
Content vs. Brevity
How much of a single piece should I show? Web design, particularly of the dynamic variety, is difficult to represent in one or two screenshots. The obvious answer seems to be a simple live link, but if the design ever changes after I’ve moved on, it becomes useless, although I suppose if a site I’ve worked on gets redesigned, it probably shouldn’t be something I keep in my portfolio anyway. So maybe a screenshot or two accompanied by a good description and a live link isn’t such a bad idea after all.
Ok, let’s do this4.