Design Tools
- Figma
- Canva
After graduating with a master's degree, my client realized that while her resume was impressive, potential employers were often asking for a portfolio to better showcase her accomplishments and professional journey. As a communications and marketing strategist, she didn’t have visual assets to display, like a designer would, but she did have an extensive list of achievements, statistics, and performance metrics that she wanted to highlight. The goal of this project was to create an online portfolio that would emphasize her accomplishments while also showcasing her personality, aligning with her desire to work at in a creative industry like fashion and beauty.
Insight
Design concepts & challenges
Since this portfolio is displaying text instead of visual work the main challenge was creating a portfolio that would appeal to a creative audience while still showcasing her communication and strategy expertise. To achieve this, I focused on the following design principles:
- Humanizing the Experience:
- Adding images from her work experiences and making the site visually dynamic, so it felt more like a personal story.
- Storytelling:
- Using photos and thoughtful typography to highlight her career journey, accomplishments, and future goals.
- Balance:
- Striking the right balance between professionalism and creativity, ensuring the portfolio could appeal to a wide audience.
The Design
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Structure & Key Sections
- Navigation & Introduction:
- A simple design with a scrolling banner with adjectives that describe the client.
- About Me Section:
- A short but impactful section introducing the client and explaining why she’s passionate about communications and marketing.
- Career Background:
- This section details her career journey, from her education to her professional experience. The client chose to write this section as a story of how she is the person she is today and why she passionate about her career. By integrating photos from past roles, I helped bring her story to life.
- Accomplishments & Performance:
- This section was one of the most important, as it focused on measurable results from her previous positions. We wanted to show the impact of her work, showcasing metrics, such as improvements in business performance or successful campaigns, that stands out apart from other text.
- Testimonials:
- A section dedicated to client and colleague testimonials. This section humanizes her portfolio even further, making it easier for potential employers to connect with her story and trust her capabilities.
- Skills:
- Here, I highlighted her key skills, using icons and visuals to make the content engaging while still conveying important information clearly. The section was designed to emphasize her communication and marketing strategy expertise.
Design & Dev Considerations
Responsive Design: I used media query's to adjust the layout to different screen sizes, providing a seamless user experience across devices.
Semantic Code & Maintainability: I wrote clean, organized code to ensure that the website is easily editable and maintainable in the future. Using HTML5 semantic elements helped the code to be more straightforward if the client ever needs to edit it herself.
User Experience (UX): The design is intuitive, with a logical flow that guides visitors through her story, skills, and accomplishments. I ensured that the site was accessible by using aria-labels, ability to pause animated text and user confirmation messages when leaving her website.
