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But before I do that, I wanted to mention two enormous sources of inspiration for me. The first is Wilson Miner’s website, which combines strong sans-serif typography, a solid grid and a stunning (and changeable) monochromatic color scheme.

Wilson Miner's website

The second is Jason Santa Maria’s website, which brings a magazine style approach to template driven websites. Each blog post on his site comes complete with a different design that complements the post’s subject.

Jason Santa Maria's website

With my new site, I want to have have the same flexibility that Wilson Miner and Jason Santa Maria have in their sites. I think that flexibility will ultimately make posting content to my site more enjoyable, since I’ll be able to stretch my design legs.

The challenge going forward is creating a design that’s clean, unique and bold, but that also allows for freedom down the road.

I’ve decided to not wed myself to the idea of including all of this copy, even if it already is short and punchy. I think Leon is right that some of it should be banished to other pages. This way I can put more emphasis on the work I’m presenting. 

Per Andrea’s advice, I will include details of my technical expertise somewhere (although perhaps not immediately on the homepage). My original thought was that most potential clients wouldn’t care about a list of acronyms they probably don’t understand. But it could be comforting for people with passing familiarity of web technology.

Other than that, I made two changes to the text I provided in the last post. I’ve highlighted the changes here:

Welcome message
I’m Chris Johnson and. I create stylish but and effective websites and & print materials. I’m based in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Why you should hire me
I’m one person, not a gigantic company. That means I’m friendly, efficient and capable of giving your project the attention it deserves.

My design philosophy
Design should be about efficient and effective communication first, and beauty second. All the fancy decoration in the world won’t save a project that’s over-budget, late, or worse, misunderstood.

What I can do
Websites (design, programming, training and maintenance)
HTML Mass Emails
Logos
Print materials (brochures, newsletters, business cars)

Contact
Feel free to call me at (919) 599-0545. Or you can email me at chris@cjohnson.us. You can also use this form…

Rotating examples of design work

Unfortunately, I tend to do the same thing to myself when I’ve worked on my own projects. I think that ultimately my designs have suffered from having to shoehorn content into a design I’m already wedded to. 

For my new website, I’m going to try to work with actual content for a few pages (the homepage and a blog post page at the very least) while I come up with the design.

Luckily, for a few of these pages I already have suitable content from my current site. But the homepage was an area where I thought my copywriting could use some serious work. A friend of mine told me that my copy focused too much on listing what I could do, and not how I’d actually help potential clients. That message was reinforced when this article on writing better copy at A List Apart came out within the same week my friend offered his criticism.

The A List Apart article advised that a product page should strive to answer these four questions:

1. Who is the product for?
2. What is the product?
3. What does the product do for its target user?
4. Why is the product better than the available alternatives?

With that in mind, this is the first draft of new copy for my homepage:

Welcome message
I’m Chris Johnson and I create stylish but effective websites and print materials. I’m based in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Why you should hire me
I’m one person, not a gigantic company. That means I’m friendly, efficient and capable of giving your project the attention it deserves.

My design philosophy
Design should be about efficient and effective communication first, and beauty second. All the fancy decoration in the world won’t save a project that’s over-budget, late, or worse, misunderstood.

What I can do
Websites (design, programming, training and maintenance)
HTML Mass Emails
Logos
Print materials (brochures, newsletters, business cars)

Contact
Feel free to call me at (919) 599-0545. Or you can email me at chris@cjohnson.us. You can also use this form…

Rotating examples of design work

Criticism, as always, is welcome.

So take me away, I don’t mind
But you better promise me, I’ll be back in time
Gotta get back in time – Huey Lewis and the News

Before I begin any visual work on a new site, I usually work with the client to come up with a site map for at least the primary and secondary pages (Clients rarely have any solid idea of what they need on a third level unless we’re reorganizing an existing site). Site maps are valuable for a number of reasons:

1. It helps your clients plan out what content they need to generate and when
2. You’ll know what levels of navigation you’ll have to accommodate for in your designs
3. If there are any really important atypical pages (such as a Search Results page on a database driven website) you’ll know to spend more time designing those pages
4. You can help your client work out unintuitive names for pages and paths through the website.

I realized last night, after I posted about which logo I chose, that I had neglected to outline my plan for the portfolio site. Basically, I’m following the same plan I had for the last version of the site. The mission of the site is to promote myself as a designer and programmer and hopefully teach a few people along the way with my blog.

There’s going to be a homepage, a portfolio, a page to view my resume and a contact page. Here’s a site map created with the free service Writemaps:

By using a content management system it should be relatively painless to add sections in the future if I need them. I also need to be sure to design the navigation in such a way that doesn’t severely limit my ability to add future items. Basically this means using text links instead of images for buttons.

'CJ' in a slightly modified Helvetica Bold Italic

With this mark I figured I could use variations when necessary or appropriate.

Variations on a theme

I kept coming back to the idea of white letters knocked out of a black square or circle. I like the tension between the foreground and background.

At this point I’m not sure which ideas I like best. I’m leaning toward the rectangle rectangular letters (last row), and the Helvetica Bold Italic knocked out of the circle (fifth row, first item). I’m going to mull them over and get feedback from my friends and family.

Not to be too banal, but I’m looking for the option that’s timeless, versatile and interesting.

Feel free to give me your comments.

Maybe that wasn’t the best way to go about designing – these days, I usually start with rough pencil sketches and I’ll simply mark the placement of the logo by writing ‘logo’ – but I think having a logo will help me design my portfolio website. Aside from type. I want some sort of graphical element that I can use to brand the site, even if it’s abstract.

It is only by association with a product, a service, a business, or a corporation that a logo takes on any real meaning. – Paul Rand

I don’t want to get too literal with the design, because I don’t know how to sum up my work with a symbol – it would be different if I were a plumber or even an artist – and because I ultimately agree with Mr. Rand.

There a few guidelines I follow whenever I design a logo. First, it should be done in a vector program (like Adobe Illustrator), so that it can be resized without losing quality. And it should be done in black & white first for maximum versatility. Just about every company has their logo plastered on some badly photocoppied flier at some point, so you might as well prepare for it.

With all that said, here are the designs I’ve come up with so far, but I’m still playing around:

Logo set #1

I’m Chris Johnson, a designer and web developer. I’m starting this blog to chronicle the redesign of my personal portfolio website.

‘Didn’t you just finish a new design for your portfolio site?’

Yes I did, but I think the design is missing something. It’s clean, it’s bold and it’s flexible. Nevertheless it’s missing that spark I want in my personal site.

Here’s what the site looks like now:

Homepage

You can also take a look at the portfolio page, a portfolio item page and the contact page. If you have any comments on that design please post them.

Saying that it’s missing ‘spark’ is a little vague, I admit. So, if I was forced to make a definitive critique I would say that there just isn’t any breathing room. Part of the problem is that I wrote way too much copy, but I also didn’t pay enough attention to how the user’s eye should move around the page. The colors may be a little bland too, but that would have been easy to fix.

I’m my own worst client

In my experience, designing something for yourself is unusually tough. When I’m working for a client I’m often a little frustrated by impending deadlines, having to appeal to someone else’s sense of aesthetics and budgets. However, when I’m working for myself – especially on something where I’m essentially showing off – I have to admit that I miss the structure provided by client work. Otherwise, I find that I’m almost drowned by the practically limitless possibilities.

Those problems are compounded by my desire to impress other designers, potential clients and myself. Designing for other designers is probably a waste of time, but who doesn’t want to impress their colleagues? Designing for potential clients adds another wrinkle. How do you impress without going overboard?

And then there’s me. I’m never quite satisfied with any work I do and I’m learning new techniques almost daily, which is good because it means I’m motivated to improve. But it also causes me to tinker and change things that I don’t need to (perhaps I’m doing that with this redesign?). I can’t let myself get bogged down trying to make my portfolio site the ultimate culmination of everything I’ve learned and am capable of doing. It’s just not possible.

The goal

I’m trying to accomplish two primary things with the new site redesign. 1) I want the site to be memorable and unique, and 2) I want it to be flexible in terms of color and layout. (I think the old design whiffed at the 1st ball, while knocking the 2nd out of the park.)

My hope is that this journal will help me structure the redesign process and just as importantly, provide a sounding board for my ideas. So please, your comments and criticism are welcome and essential.

Thanks for visiting!