Today's entry will discuss how this site as a whole was created and published. The post following this will discuss the overall plan and what improvements are being finalised for the portfolio section.
Getting Started
One of the first problems every project has is: what tools are best suited and why?
Both questions are essential to the design and development process and both questions help to answer potential issues down the line, if they are tackled early on.
I wanted to created a space that so-far I have not seen online. I needed a space where I could show case my design work and my programming projects. Although I did not feel showcasing was good enough. Most design portfolio's show the finished piece slapped beside lots of other finished pieces. That may work for a graphic designer or illustrator, but as a Multimedia designer/developer I make stuff that sometimes moves.. that sometimes is dynamic and at other times is static.
At present to showcase my work I found that I was utilising many different services. Audio work is on soundcloud, videos on youtube and vimeo, graphical elements are found on pinterest, behance, deviantart and my personal blogs.
As a designer is was obvious how big of a design flaw this experience was. Asking someone to traverse the internet, chasing your work simply is not good enough.
SO I set off to design an experience. This project started in my final year of college. It is on-going. Admitting that something as subjective as a portfolio space is a continous process is perhaps the first step to making a good experience. By excepting this truth, you are accepting that it all does not have to be done at once.
As the site currently stands, it is a HTML5 site with some JQuery added where needed. The experience is mild and banal. This is about to change. I decided it better to start the hub than to wait for all the assets to be complete. While a flat 2d experience with a little bit of javascript magic anchors the web page at present a 3D walk-around is being tested, and will replace this version in the coming weeks, but we will discuss this later on.
How did I do it?
As I said the ideal experience was where I started. So I wanted a shared hub, but I want it to feel more like you walked into my studio, not like you're staring at the window of my studio.
To do this we need atmosphere.
I made a playlist up of ambient "working" tunes that I avidly listen to and posted it on Grooveshark and on Spotify. Both allow their users to utilise a version of their web players for website embedding. Ok cool this adds dynamism. This turned out to be the first consideration.
Yes was the answer, however :
Oops.. not many places.
Then I got an idea. Why not host the site as a Github repository?
The only downfall is that Github pages do not accept dynamic pages... hmm only half the battle.
Knowing that I had a fully functioning host though spurred me on to the design phase. Perhaps I might realise just how much could be achieved with a static site.
I began the process with my little brown sketch book (where most of my creative ideas are journaled). Before building the first phase I mocked-up the site using photoshop. I have put a sample of my WIPS from this stage on (behance) [behance.net/jheff/wip].