OVERVIEW
Content, Design, and Thinking
When designing a website there a lot of different techniques you have to take into consideration. One of the most important aspects of your website is the template design. For my website, although unfortunately I don't know what the name of my template is, I chose to type in "portfolio" in the template search engine and then, I scrolled until I found a template that suited the design I wanted for my portfolio. I knew that when choosing my template I was looking more for layout because in the end, I would end up re-designing it myself. I would eventually change the colors, the text, and the background of my entire website. A template is simply giving you a head-start. Once beginning the creative thinking process of how you want a website to be designed you have to take into consideration the purpose of your website and also, want to take into consideration your personal creativity and what you find pleasing. For me, I chose to use different fonts, backgrounds, and designs for each section of my portfolio. Let's take a look at my "Home" page to start. Click the "Home" icon to go to the home page:
When designing my "Home" page I wanted it to look similar to what you'd find at the beginning of a magazine, a table of contents, but instead of the basic design of a table of contents I designed there to be three horizontal icons that when clicked on lead you to a main section of my portfolio. I also wanted to be sure the purpose of my website stood out which is why I increased the size of the title and made it a bold font. The background of my "Home" page is also very captivating. It isn't distracting rather it blends in nicely into the background and allows the more important designs such as the title to pop-out more. Color scheme was also important to me. I wanted to be sure that my color combinations when creating each section of my portfolio worked well together. A great example of choice in color scheme would my "Immersion Experience" section. The narrative portion of my "Immersion Experience" section looks like this:
As we can see, I chose to make the background a dark ocean-like image to not only set the mood/tone for the narrative but also, to allow little distraction from the narrative and rather make it more captivating. The title font I chose to make cursive because my narrative itself contain what could be described as "entries". The narrative includes headings with different dates that explain a specific event that took place during that time frame. The less important information I chose to make it in a smaller normal, but readable, sized font. You may click on any of the pictures included and it'll take you to the section depicted. The following images depict the other portions included in my "Immersion Experience" section:
The backgrounds of both of these tabs are very dull (this was intentional). I purposefully wanted them to be a dull tone or less colorful background because I wanted the focus to be more set on the text included itself. The icon that says "click here to watch the documentary" stands out a lot more than the background does because I wanted people to want to click the button more rather than be more distracted by the background and overlook the button. Even then, the color schemes never clashed. The blue and gray scheme isn't obnoxious nor super bland. They contrast each other very well.
These last two parts of my "Immersion Experience"I chose to do more of a "nude" color scheme. There's pinkish and tan tones which blend very well together. The layout of both of these parts are very different from the previous sections. One doesn't include much text and is actually just a link to a YouTube video I filmed and uploaded discussing my final thoughts on my immersion experience. It represents a sort of "wrap-up". Then the reflection portion is a giant rectangle layout with a text both within a text box of questions followed by answers. The bigger text box, the one that includes the title "Reflection" also has a moving background to it. Originally, I wasn't going to include any moving backgrounds but when I saw this background I noticed that it was very subtle and you could barely tell it was moving and the moving background fit the color scheme that I wanted so I chose to leave it in there. If you'd like to see the moving background simply click on the second image illustrated above that represents the "Reflection" portion of my "Immersion Experience" section.
The hardest portion of my portfolio would have to be my "Movie Review" portion. It took a lot of time and effort on my part and I put in a lot of work to make sure that every element flowed together to create a story within just one section. This is the only section of my portfolio where you scroll and different portions are included together. I didn't create different tabs for anything. It is all sort of combined and tied-in together. Here is what the section looks like (click on the images to go to that portion of my portfolio):
The different portions of my "Movie Review" section are unique in their own way but still flow as a collective. I chose to include links to the different articles/sources I used. I used different fonts, font colors, and text boxes. I used different backgrounds. The first image depicts an actual picture captured in the documentary that I watched for my movie review. There was a lot more design going on in this portion. The last portion I chose to include was the more interactive section. I wanted to add-in a "Contact" section where the readers could find my contact information (my email) as well as a comment portion where they could comment their thoughts on my website and just openly share anything they wanted to share. As for my works cited, I plan to include works cited either within each section or at the end of each section. In order to organize my website better I also chose to include a "Home" icon at the bottom of every section of my portfolio that'll take you back to the "Home" page if needed.
Overall, I genuinely enjoyed creating my portfolio on WiX. I have had prior experience of how to use WiX and how to navigate the site and create my own website but despite this, it actually took more effort and time because I placed more pressure on myself to be able to reach my full creative capacity since I already had basic knowledge on how to use WiX. Hopefully, the time and effort I put into my portfolio shows!
