3.2 Planning & Creation

navigation

layout #1

To begin planning the navigation for my portfolio I started by exploring various artists portfolios to experience and see for myself how well their layouts and navigation was presented determining my own from these ideas. Below is a basic layout displayed in a flowchart form showing the menus and navigation from each menu, Although very basic I can implement each aspect of development for each project titled boldly and easily visible including personal, project and possibly even paid work. On the home page I would display a simple introduction to my portfolio with some images displaying my best work in a slideshow format. The rest of the menus include my about section which will essentially just be explaining the person behind the work itself (Me) and possibly my resume below this including my skills and achievements. In the contact menu I will include various means to contact myself and or follow me on other websites and social media such as Artstation, Sketchfab, Instagram and other.

Layout #2

In the flowchart below I’ve developed further on the one created above planning my navigation for my own portfolio, I’ve altered how I want my home page to be displayed where I will purely display a slideshow in high quality of all of my best work including the navigation menus depending on how I want these displayed preferably in bold so the viewer can easily see them. I have also added sub-menus to my portfolio tab where Instead of having chunks of work displayed in one menu they will be separated within several independent tabs including student work, independent work and possibly paid work in the future. Everything else I have kept relatively similar other than some minor tweaks to the contact page where I will have the links to my various sites including social media on my homepage in forms of logos where they can be clicked to navigate to them accordingly.

Page layouts

layout #1 – portfoliobox

Home Page

After exploring what portfoliobox has to offer, I’ve decided that I will most likely use this to display my portfolio as it is free with some terms however is only roughly $6 a month to have full access to everything they provide. However they don’t provide as much options as Artstation does where you can display multiple images per post instead of using pages for each piece of work.

Below is how I would like my homepage to look, The black box indicating the introduction to my portfolios text and the red will be a Parallax scrolling of my best work. I have tested to see how this looks and personally I think it looks very professional as you can put the images into fullscreen only displaying the images, text and the menus.

As you can see I plan on only having 4 menus on my portfolios website, a home page, portfolio page, about me and last of all my resume.

I’ve tested various color schemes to see which looks best on this site however I will most likely end up simply using black, white and grey. The font for my name will be fully white, the rest of the menus will be a light grey giving a small contrast which stands out quite well.

Portfolio menu idea

For my portfolios menu itself, I plan to have sub-menus underneath displaying each pieces of work and when they were produced. For example, shown below are two sub-menus titled ‘Student Work’ and ‘Personal Work’ As time progresses I hope to have a sub-menu dedicated to work which I am paid to do however at the current time, these are all that I would need when creating my site.

work layout

A personal preference for one of their page templates is a plain vertical layout, this allows you to add images and have them displayed in a line below each other. Although this is a great website I still personally think that Artstation is superior as you can organize your work far simpler and more professionally.

about me

Portfoliobox offers many options in terms of templates when it comes to the about me section, there are many layouts which are available to choose from however the main one which looks best in my opinion is a small image on the left side of the screen with the about me text laid out on the right side of the image using white text on a black/grey background to draw attention to the text itself.

resume

For this page I will be displaying my resume including my past Education, Experience, Interests, Awards and skills. The box on the left under the menus indicate where the text for all of my Education and others will go which looks very nice on the site itself giving an extremely professional feel to the site. The larger box on the right will be displaying my skills obtained throughout my education and above this will be my contact information including an image of myself.

layout #2 – Artstation

Homepage

Artstation provides a default layout for free which I will further explain using the image below for the homepage. The dark blue indicates where my name and profession will be located to give my portfolio an identity. The cyan indicates where my about and resume will be located to help future employers or universities easily access my information. The brown square has three menus, All work, personal work and project work done as a student, eventually I hope to add more to this such as Independent work or professional however I’m pleased with it thus far. And of course the red box simply displays a basic image of the work I’m displaying and once clicked it shows the development in picture format.

I think I prefer this overall as it’s incredibly simplistic and looks rather professional, I am considering buying the paid version to obtain various layouts to make it look even better when it comes to actually touching up and creating my finalized portfolio.