After some more research into different creative platforms and website hosts, I decided to make my professional online portfolio on Wix. I chose Wix because I have had some previous experience using their website builder and a lot of my friends use it for their website blogs. While I was sorting out my selected images and creating the page layouts- I just used a black background theme and chunky white text. After all of my files were uploaded and in the right page layouts I experimented with the style of the blog- including fonts and and colour pallets. I think I started overcomplicating things as I had not really decided what kind of website would better suit my brand identity. I was caught between the two and my website was looking quite confused and unprofessional.
My page layout was completely confused! I had white and purple fonts on the black background. I had used a circular cut out of three images which led to different sections of my website (photography, illustration, magazine ect) next to a square image of myself for the ‘About Me’ section. The shapes looked very awkward next to each other and the whole layout felt wrong. I decided to go back and do some more research into the kind of styles I like, but also consider what my brand identity is to me and try to define that in terms of aesthetic. I at this point had finished creating my logo, which helped me move fast my wobble in the website design and visualise a part of my brand identity.
I did like some aspects of the Wix website, such as the photo-gallery of all of the photographic projects. I think the main problem with the website was the colour pallet and the over complication on the home page. I also really like using Wix because it’s compatible with almost every file type- making it really easy to display pdf’s such as magazines or books ect. After some consideration I decided to completely start over and try out a new platform. I opted to use Adobe Portfolio, as I had seen a few websites that I liked made with their templates. I found it really easy to use and i opted for a minimal aesthetic to really allow my images to take centre stage. I opted for a side bar navigation instead of at the top, as I thought it gave a more gallery feel to it, rather than an online display (if that makes sense?).
The page titles follow underneath of the logo and then contact information and social links. The home page opens on the photography section, because this is my largest body of work. I wanted to have this as the home page but the other pages titled first so the audience see’s that the website is more than just photography. I really like the image layout and the simplistic text.
Adobe Portfolio doesn’t accept all file types, so I could not upload all of my work without an extension. I used a free alternative to issuu publishing, called YUMPU. It’s really easy to use and just work as an embeded link into the website. The only think I don’t like about the link is that it comes with a dark boarder around the media. This does make my website look slightly more unprofessional, as I couldn’t find a more subtle way to add the PDF files- but I thought this would be better than multiple flat images going down the page. YUMPU also has a page turning effect which makes it feel more realistic than a sudden jump between pages. The Adobe Portfolio also has some really nice self promotional features to use. I chose to use this ‘You may also like’ feature which randomly selects other pieces of work they might want to view. Overall I’m really happy with how the website turned out and I think it was the right idea to move my site to Adobe.