Portfolio Redesign: It’s About Time
It’s been far too long. The design of my previous portfolio launched in July 2008 or about 20 years ago in web years. Possibly a slight exaggeration but I now need a place where I can blog about things other than web design and development like I do at Inspect Element. Don’t forget the simple fact that the old design was horribly out of date and was designed and developed in my early days of entering the industry when I had little experience. I need something that represents what I’m about today, not two and a half years ago.
The following are what I consider to be key aspects of this design.
Simplicity
I’ve kept the design simple and clean, inspired by the simplicity of websites such as iA, Frank Chimero, Trent Walton and Nicolas Gallagher. All of which still posses style, character and meaning, mainly through the use of typography.
Craftsmanship
Ever since reading Handcrafted CSS by Dan Cederholm, my eyes have been opened to how good your CSS can be if you just take a little care and pride in your work. My leather logo with stitches is just for show, it represents the craftsmanship I put into my work. Feel free to inspect my CSS in any of the site I’ve developed.
Readability
Making sure my site is as easy to read as possible was my main priority. It frustrates me when I come across a site where the actual content is difficult to read and I don’t want any frustrated visitors. I’ve chosen FF Meta Serif Web Pro from Typekit for the main text because it’s an absolute pleasure to read on screen.
This also includes page titles. You will see on the homepage that the title is simply ‘Tom Kenny’ and on notebook and work pages it’s ‘Article or Work Title by Tom Kenny’. Then the ‘by’ is removed on the about or contact pages to simply read ‘About Tom Kenny’ and ‘Contact Tom Kenny’. Further more, the ‘Tweet this’ button at the bottom generates the title followed by ‘by @tkenny’, my Twitter username. All very simple and easy to read and understand.
Flexibility
Following on from readability is flexibility. I want you to be able to read my site on other devices too so I’ve optimised it for smartphones and tablets like the iPad which support CSS3 media queries. Media queries aren’t always the best option for delivering content to mobile users but for my site, it definitely is.
Here’s how it looks on the iPad in portrait view:
It reverts back to the standard layout in landscape mode which works really well.
And on the iPhone (and similar smartphones):
Portfolio
View my work here. I’ll be adding work to my portfolio in the form of standard blog posts (not all of it is up yet) and I make sure I’m proud of all the work I create so I will want show it off. If the work you’re creating isn’t worth showing off in your portfolio, why are you creating it?
Please let me know what you think of my new design on Twitter @tkenny. I hope you like it.