Welcome To My Website

After not updating my personal website in two years, I thought it was time for a change. But before I started, I knew that I had to change my approach since I’m starting to focus on becoming a freelance designer. I wanted to showcase my design work to potential clients and employers, but this time I went into detail about each project, providing a better understanding of the challenges and how I solved them. With my new website, I still wanted to include more information about my projects but also have more information about myself, like my core principles and design process. Another thing that was improved was my blog since I plan on writing more articles on topics that I’m passionate about like business and design.

My previous website was coded from scratch so everything was static and couldn’t be easily updated without adding more code, that’s why for my new website I wanted to use a content management system (CMS) to make it easier to add new projects and blog articles. At first, I thought about using WordPress since it was the most popular, but after doing some research I decided to use Webflow. While I was doing research, I found many benefits of using Webflow compared to WordPress, so it was an easy choice. I wanted something that would allow me to create a custom website without any compromises. I would highly recommend that if you want to create your portfolio website, then you should use Webflow.

Updated Design

With my previous websites, I kept changing the design only making small updates. But this time, I wanted to start over from scratch and try something new that I haven’t done before. I have very high standards when it comes to my personal website so it was hard for me to design something completely different. I wanted the design of my website to look clean and simple but at the same time feel very user friendly so that users could have a great experience. The focus was to showcase my design work in the best way possible, explaining more about each project, but also improving upon other important areas of my website like the blog and about page.

During the design process, I was thinking about how users might interact with my website and I always kept that in mind. I wanted to include smaller details that would make their experience better and in my opinion, small details can turn a good design into something great. I wanted to set a good impression when someone came to my website, so I created a catchy headline rather than a generic message. The headline also animates in when the page loads which catches the users attention. The next thing the user might notice is the gorgeous preview images of my design work and if someone hovers their mouse over one of them, the hover effect matches the colour of that image which provides a custom experience.

Advanced Features

After figuring out that I wanted to use Webflow to build my website, I found some extra features that I wanted to add. One of those features were custom animations, I only wanted to animate the heading text to give users an interactive experience when a page loads. Webflow also offered a great CMS as a feature, I took advantage of that and created a related articles section so that it could help users stay on the website and read more articles. This was a cool feature, I’ve always wanted to do something similar but I didn’t know how to create it with basic code. Using Webflow allowed me to add these features that took my website to the next level and helped improve the user experience.

Webflow vs WordPress

At first, I thought that I would code everything from scratch, but I knew it would take a long time, so I thought I would give Webflow a try to see what was possible. I originally thought it was another tool like WordPress which was cumbersome and frustrating, but only after a day of using it, my opinion changed. I was very impressed and couldn’t wait to see what other things it would help me create. If I had to use something like WordPress, I knew that I would have to lower my standards and remove complex features. Webflow allowed me to create my website exactly how I imagined with no compromises. I’m really impressed to the point where every website I create in the future will be made with Webflow.

Final Thoughts

One thing that I learned about this whole process is that even if you’re working full time, you should always update your website because it represents you as a professional designer. I didn’t realize how long it would take me to write new content, but a portfolio website is more than just images, it’s about explaining your projects in detail and providing more information about yourself. Something else that I learned is that it’s worth having a CMS for your website, now I can easily add design projects and blog articles on a regular basis without any hassle. I’m very happy with how my website turned out, especially with the small details taking everything to the next level and representing myself well as a designer.