Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium David McNeill

Being a designer doesn’t mean you know to design yourself…

I set about putting together my portfolio for the first. I’ve been working in design and communication for six years but I didn’t need a portfolio.

Most jobs were entry level, it wasn’t like they were asking for anything beyond competence.

Now I’m striking out, networking, meeting people, and shock-horror, I get asked “Where can I find you?”

Do I direct them to my twitter, full of esoteric but moderately professional tweets?

AC Origins gifts you a towel outfit early in the game. You could actually play the whole game as a man in a towel. What a delight

— @dcmihatepie

The answer was obvious (portfolio — imagine that but it echoes in a menacing way) so I put my head down and got to work.

The Idea

I wanted to create a portfolio that represented my dissonant influences and passions, but I also wanted to create a portfolio that represented my design and communication experience.

The biggest hurdle with the concept of doing both was a basic, obvious design principal: make one thing, make it do one thing well.

Trying to have my portfolio represent both became impossible, so I focused on dissonance, not harmony.

Anti-design and contrast are big right now (see dropbox). I didn’t want to just make something obnoxious and colourful for the sake of it — the goal was to create something by me, for me, to tell the story of my work.

Thus was born the mantra for the project: make it real clear.

Note the irony of “real” instead of “really.” That’s about as complex as my humour gets.

Starting The Thing

Ideas are great, but as anyone in a creative industry knows, everyone has good ideas.

Execution is everything.

So began the arduous process of deciding where to start.

Here’s a brief summary of the questions I dealt with in the 10 hours before writing a line of code:

Should I write the whole thing from scratch or use a new shiny kit like Webflow?
Is a portfolio everything I’ve ever done or just the not-bad-stuff?
If I’m asking development professionals to read it, is it fair to assume they use a desktop or do I need to design for mobile first?
What the hell is my personal brand anyway?
I don’t have any decent headshots, how does one get headshots? Do I want my face on my portfolio? I need a hair cut.
Where do I start?

I started to Make The Thing by spending 20 hours on land-book, awwwards and dribble.

I was waiting for inspiration to strike (it’s also NaNoWriMo and I’m a part time author so I haven’t slept since the start of November).

What I realised was that the best portfolios had two things in common.

The best portfolios represented the designer’s voice and weren’t obnoxiously clever.

An unmissable trend in portfolios with commendations is crazy innovative design or navigation or spacing or responsiveness.

As cool as they were, they sucked to use.

They lacked the one thing great UX relies on: intuition.

As awesome as a triggered on hover navigation that eases into each quadrant of the browser is, it sucks to use unless you’re a designer.

So…

“Make it real clear”

To Template Or Not To Template

The question was dumb.

Start from scratch.

It’ll be more work and more authentic and probably not worth the hassle.

Duh.

It wasn’t a smart call but it felt like me.

Some designers are aces are working with a million different design peripherals.

I get it.

But I wanted my portfolio to represent me, and at my core I’m not complicated.

I like clear ideas, simple words and focused design.

So I started the portfolio from scratch.

No JS, no libraries.

Just markup and CSS.

Starting The Thing

This is around when all the cylinders started firing.

I had a vision and started putting the skeleton together.

White space.

Bold colours.

The Thing

After a few weeks of picking at it, the portfolio is mostly done.

I wanted to tell a story more than showcase my work, so I focused on making my voice seen.

My portfolio is scrappy, anxious, loud and considerate: it’s me.

I spent a long time deciding how to integrate the works I’ve created: do I feature them all on their own pages?

Do they just get a section?

I’m still working on pages for most of my projects but I finished the first one.

The hardest part of the whole process wasn’t the design or content or colours or code.

The hardest part of making a portfolio is deciding how you think of yourself.

My portfolio turned out to be technically simple, clean and bold.

It’s me, but it wouldn’t be me without a little flare.

So I put an astronaut in the footer, because why bother designing if it isn’t fun?

Have a look at the on-going finished product here

Still picking away at divider media queries, building out pages for other projects and generally thinking too hard about what I want to feature.

Making a portfolio/CV/Resume is really weird. was originally published in Prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Making a portfolio/CV/Resume is really weird.

Cool stuff, every week

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