This article may be dated March 26, 2013, however, I just wrote it today, July 9, 2014. I felt that keeping this article’s original date would mark the beginning (or near to it) of when I started building this 2nd rendition of my personal site.
The previous site lasted for almost 3 years! I’m very proud, since the average designer’s site usually lasts about 1 to 2 years (designers are finicky, I should know). I decided to make the change almost 2 years ago. Why didn’t I finish the site over a year ago? Priorities must be set… I have a family. A wife and now 2 kids. And, I love them all! :)
Furthermore, I wanted the site to be more enduring. I knew that I had to make this next design even more solid and polished than before. Taking into consideration my own personal style (modern) and the principles of “good design“, I worked up some drafts in my favorite design program, InDesign (yes, InDesign can do web, and better than Photoshop!). When I was happy with the various pages’ layouts, I started coding for HTML and eventually WordPress.
Funny thing… after getting the site into WordPress, I made a few more design changes, the biggest of which was the navigation. I’ve always felt that horizontal navigation lacked. But why? Upon much analysis, I came to the conclusion that horizontal navigation can become too populated for a screen’s width (too wide), thereby cluttering the design and somewhat overloading the user with where to go next.
I decided to be innovative and forward-thinking in this extremely important functionality of a website.
I’ve seen many sites that use mobile navigation: the kind that use a button icon (aka hamburger icon), that once is clicked, reveals a vertical menu either on the left-side, right-side, or full-screen. I got to thinking… “Why not do this for all versions of the site?” Not only will the navigation be consistent on all devices and screen sizes, but the code will be easier to manage, shorter (less to for the browser to download), and the interface cleaned up / simplified (one of the rules of “good design”). After some Googling, I chose SlideBars by Adam Smith because it was easy to implement, minimal with code (loads faster), uses jQuery, and can incorporate elements other than the menu links, e.g. images, search bars, basically any HTML. Anyway, I’m glad the menu came out as nice as it did! Thank you, Adam! :)
What else to say? Ah… enjoy my portfolio! I’ve been working hard getting that portion of the site up (not to mention the countless hours spent on these projects). I can’t put everything up for various reasons, but the main one is that I’ve done so much work over the last 8 years, I couldn’t possibly put it all up. Also, some of my early work was plain crap. Don’t worry, I just put the best work up. No need to burn your eyes with that old stuff. I’ll be adding new projects as often as time allows. I’ve got a few amazing pieces coming / in-the-works, however, I just need a bit of time to prep them for the site.
I hope you enjoy my site! Drop me a line if you feel inclined!
12 years ago | Mar 26, 2013 | Leave a Comment
