Staying Current with a Portfolio Site

Web Design August 22, 2008

Website designers tend to be obsessed with redesigning their own websites all the time. It's nothing unusual - we're just trying to stay current, not necessarily with web trends, but more our own design style. After all, our websites *are* us virtually, so it's important that they reflect who we are and what our design preferences are.

It's funny, but even after you spent hours on version 3.2, which you were quite satisfied with originally, a couple months roll by and suddenly now you feel the need to change everything: the colors, the fonts, the words, etc. and come out with version 4. But redoing the website shouldn't necessarily be about those surface things - it should be about the underlying concept. Are you changing your target audience? Are you marketing yourself differently? What's at the core?

Your Concept

If it's not already clear, you should ensure that your site presents a story about you, either through words or pictures or both. Sure, throwing up a bunch of random pictures and artwork will tell anyone you're a well-rounded artist...but is that the real message you want to convey?

For me, I want my audience to know that I'm a good storyteller in whatever form of media I choose. A large portfolio of various artwork only makes sense here when I can explain the story behind each piece, evincing strategic design skills and not just graphic design.

Before even considering a redesign, you should form a one-sentence high-concept description of what you're creating and what your theme is. It's usually very hard - I don't even know if I have it down. But every design decision you make from there on should work with your theme. Give your audience a "six-second pitch" and make them understand from the moment they get to your homepage who are you and what you're about.

As I've mentioned before, good design is visual appeal + underlying concept. It's fairly easy to make a website that looks pretty. It's much harder to make it fused together with some theme or core idea.

Your Content

If you've got a bunch of stuff to display, you've got to categorize. People often split into "traditional artwork" or "websites" etc. which is fine. But you may end up with too many topics, which can detract from your theme. Yes, you're a designer, but what does that *mean* to you? To your audience?

For a long time, I didn't focus my "design campaign" and was getting offers for jobs I didn't want to do - web programming and the like. And I realized that by not focusing my presentation on what I wanted to do, people were reading about the engineering feats and responding to that only. My goal was really to show that I'm a designer who also understands the functionality side.

Your presentation is the voice of your concept. Every piece of information or image that your audience sees should be linked to your story or theme somehow. And sometimes you may just have to refrain from showing certain art pieces because they don't fit in. That's okay - you don't have to show everything.

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This is not, of course, the end all. If you create a perfect website, it won't last. Knowing your audience and the industry is how you got here now. But it's ever changing and your site will too. That's what keeps you in the game :)

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