This week I’m working out the basics for my shiny new portfolio website. I’m at the point in design school where it’s crucial my portfolio be accessible for anyone to view. I produced a lot of great work in my recent expat semester at University of Westminster, and I was fortunate to land some graphic design work this summer. My portfolio is bulkier than ever now, so it’s high time for a website. Now back at my home university, I’m enrolled in a web design course. 

I started my process with some mood boards. Initially, I worked out three concepts, based mainly around color schemes that I love. Two of the three mood boards have a rainbow theme, the first being the dark rainbow. For this one I was thinking, “grungy, striking, whimsical.” My ideas for dark rainbow color schemes reflect my love for colors that are bright, warm and dark. Also important to this mood is how I imagine the typography. I envision it to blend masculine blackletter with feminine lowercase letters. I love contrast, so this attitude makes it into my current working type concept. Studio feedback suggests this was the least popular mood, but a handful of my peers liked the idea for its boldness. My current working concept draws on this mood’s use of dark colors and blackletter.

The second mood board was for a pastel rainbow concept. This concept features an ephemeral type treatment with trendy display type. I think the pastel rainbow concept succeeds in being welcoming and stylish, however, it is not my favorite of the three boards for a few reasons. The first reason being that it appears overly feminine for my taste. It is critical that my portfolio is a representation of myself and the creative vision for my life. Tinted colors and dainty typography are impressive and quite attractive, but they do not best holistically represent me as an artist. Studio peers, however, loved this one. More than one commented that it was their favorite of the three mood boards. I think my second qualm with the pastel rainbow mood is actually the people-pleasing nature of it. I feel this design concept is too plain and common. I have to watch myself not to market myself as hyper trendy or distinctly corporate. These would be my fears in choosing the pastel rainbow theme.

The final mood board was (at the time) just an afterthought. Design concept three is based on the color scheme of a project I did at the University of Westminster. My carabiner cards, based on a post from Eleanor Medhurst’s blog, Dressing Dykes, utilize CMYK magenta, rich blue-black and white. I connected deeply with this project, so these colors would succeed in representing me if used on my website. Peers agreed that the hot pink on this mood board is indicative of me and my work. Another benefit of this concept is the readability. I feel that the magenta on white is expressive without being hard to digest. The legibility of this concept influenced my current working concept for the website. Oh, also I totally had to keep the pink too.

Today, I am working on combining the three concepts and tweaking them to make use of web safe colors. Currently, I have decided on a color pallet of dark maroon, hot pink and dusty lilac in addition to white. I will bring in blackletter display type, an art nouveau style monogram logo, and a modernist approach to composition. My goals for this website are to get hired while being true to myself.