Note: This post continues my series on the 2016 relaunch of my site.
One of the main goals during the relaunch of my site was to enhance the visual experience. I have seen a lot of amazing portfolio sites out there but I didn't want to make the site heavy. The main goal of my site is to provide a place for my voice to be heard. I want it to be a place where I can learn to improve my communication and writing skills, share what I am leaning and encourage others to do great work.
The landing page of jondaiello.com had to load fast, so I made the decision to keep images at a minimum. If I was going to use an image it had to serve a purpose that was well worth the download cost to the user. As it stands, you only download 2 images when you arrive. This may change over time but I am very happy with the results so far.
Since images were at a premium, I decided to focus on great typography. During the redesign process I fell in love with a Google Font called "Kanit", and it quickly became the secondary font in my design exploration. Throughout the design process performance continued to be in the front of my mind, so I chose to limit myself to 2 weights of the font to achieve a measly 770 bytes of font CSS provided via Google. Furthering the performance considerations in fonts, the decision was made to use Georgia, an elegant, serif, system font. The fonts pair nicely, and together they keep readability high throughout the content and establish an identifiable brand without the baggage of extra KB.
I'm the type of designer that can keep going. I'll keep pushing and endlessly refactor my designs. I'll study the icons, ensure color choices make sense, tweak typography, and more, and more... When a user comes to the site, they need to be able to find the latest content and then read that content. The design was put together from the ground up to support that user need. I restrained myself and kept things simple. I asked myself at every point what was driving each decision. If it supported the user and my project goals, then move forward. If it did not, then it was left out.
The whole purpose of this redesign was to improve my online presence. I wanted to make it easy for me to make updates whenever and wherever I am while keeping the integrity of the design in place. Right now I am authoring this post from my phone. So, in my opinion, this has been a huge success so far.
Websites are a living project. My personal site is not 'done'. I will continue to iterate and improve it through the coming days, months, years, etc. I have more ideas that I want to explore. From launch until now, I've already made numerous commits and pushes to my project. That's how I see the web and that's how I'll treat this project. Feel free to reach out and let me know what you think and if you have any feedback.
Need help, advice or a speaker for your event? I’d love to connect and help you build novel solutions with design.
