As my practice is varied, I often find it difficult to explain or show people what it is that I exactly mean by this therefore I want my website to communicate my varied skillset and diverse approach to visual communication successfully and in a clear and concise manner.
Lucky for me my dad is a successful software designer and developer, directing his own international business back home in Cambridge. Having taken on a new focus to better hs own skills in industry, he has offered to design and build my website in collaboration with me, to better his UX skills as well as finally get his daughters work on the web (its been a long time coming.)
In preparation for our first website "meeting" get-together I wanted to make sure I had as much information as possible to give my dad, knowing how he works and likes to get things doe and making the most of having already made a few key decisions regarding my name, branding elements and pieces in my portfolio I want to include already.
As my dad is based in my hometown in Cambridge and Im up here in Leeds - meeting to go over the initial website stuff so as to leave him with enough information to go away and have a play wasn't easy. It was recently my birthday therefore found myself back home for some small celebrations. I made sure to utilise this time and meet with my dad for a day of website sorting stuff and this was super success - IM SO EXCITED ITS FINALLY HAPPENING!
Here are some notes I made from our talks regarding the layout and what I want to happen where.
Website Specs
- As my content is so varied I would like the aesthetic of the website to remain as clean and easy to navigate as possible.
- Having researched into other practitioners websites such as:
- along with creative hubs who showcase a lot of practitioners work as tiles on one page:
https://handsomefrank.com/
- I feel that a tiled landing page is key. I want who ever types my web address in to land straight into my portfolio - so there should be no qualms about who I am or how to navigate the site to reach my work.
- Ideally I would really like some of the tiles to be animated. Aside from actual animations - I feel tiles which are animated as an almost "showreel" is a great way to showcase larger projects with multiple pieces of work.
- Once a piece of work or tile is clicked, I would like this to direct to another page specifically for that "project" where arrows can move between individual images of my work - alongside a continuously visible description of what the project is about.
To also help visualise how I want the site to look, I drew up some scamps in discussions with my dad so as to give him an even clearer idea:
Reflection
Overall a really great session and i cannot wait for a review next month.
Dad has access too and purchased wordpress admin therefore will be building my site through their generator and writing his own plugins alongside the an amazing editor suit called Elementor - designed for creating all the best websites.
I was sure just sending him everything i wanted and leaving my Dad to it would have been ok, however I am now so glad we met and had a day dedicated to such a big task. Both being in the same place to work through ideas and small do's and don'ts of the website building world meant we were both working from the same page and minimised the potential for further confusion down the round.
www.essca.co.uk is ON ITS WAY - watch this space!