At long last I have a site! I hope to use this site to post anything from design to crazy stuff my daughter Ellie does.
Disclaimer: It’s still a work in progress and my grammar is also terrible. Use and read at your own risk. I’ve removed certain functionality for now just for the sake of launching and since this is a site for me and not a client, I’m not too worried about this working on every browser in that the world. I’m on a Mac and it looks pretty decent in Chrome. In time I’ll refine things a bit but sometimes you just gotta launch. This site wasn’t doing me any good sitting on my hard drive.
I’m thankful in that I don’t have a lot of free time to work on my own projects. Sure I could make time, but the free time I do have I enjoy spending with my family. I’m not a hardcore designer like those college kids that stare at screens 20 hours a day pumping out all kinds of work. I put in my six to eight hours and then I’m ready for something more.
Putting the Pieces Together
I started development on this site over a year ago, but the logo came before that. Skillshare was just getting started at the time and I decided to take a class to increase my design skills, specifically logo design. I seldom do anything related to branding for Tin Cans unless it’s a smaller company on a budget so I thought this would be a good project for Evan Huwa’s “Logo Design: Let the Type Do the Talking”. You can check out my class project here. I got a mention in Evan’s class description so, design ability aside, it makes me think I was on the right track with my process. I highly recommend skillshare for short focused classes. Sign up with this link to give us both a free month.
Final sketch before moving into Illustrator.
With my logo complete, I sketched up a few wireframes on my trusty whiteboard and ended up with what you see here. I wanted something that displayed my personality and I think this design does that pretty well. I’m currently using all my own images and hope to continue to do so. Not that I am a photographer by any means, but I feel that will also help add to the personality of the design.
A pretty in depth process right? Since the site was for myself I was able to work fast and move quickly from ideas to a working site.
Moving Forward
If you see any issues or things I could improve upon, just let me know. A few improvements on my list include a contact form, a colophon (mainly because I enjoy reading those myself), and perhaps a resume page because you never know what the future holds.
Thanks for visiting!