For my web portfolio, I wanted to keep it minimalistic and aesthetically pleasing. I chose the Twenty Fifteen theme on WordPress for my website. I created a static home page featuring a logo which I made especially for this project. Underneath I explained a bit about myself as well as what viewers can expect to find on my portfolio site. On the sidebar, I included Home, About, Portfolio, and Blog tabs. I ordered these in order of importance as well as what I thought users would be used to. I made the Portfolio tab so that it wouldn’t open as a page from a tutorial here. Under the Portfolio tab, I added four more tabs labeled, Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, and Photography. I chose these names since I had media for each one and wanted to show that I am familiar with each of these platforms/categories.
I chose to keep my site black and white to show off my portfolio work. I also removed many widgets that had come with the theme such as “search,” “categories,” etc. This makes my site look more like a website rather than a blog. I also changed the font of my website by editing CSS to Montserrat sans-serif from google fonts. Since we were required to include a widget on our site, I put my stop motion video on the sidebar. This kind of disrupts my color scheme, but I think it was the best widget to include. I was struggling to find an image that looked professional and not out of place on my website. I was experimenting with different images as well as transforming images in photoshop. I inadvertently created the logo you now see on my site which I think tuned out great and looks very professional.
In the reading “Hierarchy” I used contrasting weight for my home page by bolding letters in the introduction of my site. This brings the viewer’s attention to certain words. From the “Design Elements and Principles” reading I implemented contrast in my design. By using black and white, my site has high contrast and also looks simple. I also used harmony by using only greyscale colors for my logo, this ties my site together visually.
I really liked WordPress’s predesigned templates because it makes it easy for someone with little knowledge of web design to create a professional looking site. WordPress also allows users to edit the HTML as well as CSS which is a huge feature for those with more knowledge of web design. There were some things I wish I could have changed but crimson pages was limited in that regard. Some things I would have liked to change were, hiding the “Home” title on my static homepage as shown in this how-to. I also would have removed the “powered by WordPress” section at the bottom of my site but wasn’t able to do this. Other than a few limitations, WordPress is a great template for creating professional looking sites.