Branding Self
Self branding is simply chasing your dreams and documenting your journey there.
As a designer, I am maturing, changing, growing, and my portfolio is a reflection of that. With graduation soon approaching, I knew it was time for an update! My objective of the redesign is to rebrand my website, resume, and any online presence as an extension and reflection of self as competent, empathetic, grounded and team oriented.
Who Is My Audience?
Any attempt at design requires knowledge and understanding of the audience. My primary audience are Product Designer Recruiters from tech companies; my secondary audience includes artists, collaborators, and photography clients.
What Qualities Are They Looking For?
Recruiters
How do you design success?
Are you and your designs data driven?
What is your process in design thinking?
What new technologies do you know?
Collaborators
What skills and ideas can you bring to the table?
Are you a team player, easy to work with?
Clients
What cameras have you used?
What pictures have you taken?
Who have you worked with?
“I choose you!!!”
The same that companies are looking for a specific clients, I am also looking for specific qualities in a company.
Are you a leader in tech and design?
Are you projects team based?
Is there mentorship or resources focused on employee development?
Is there diversity within teams?
Do you encourage innovation and creativity?
Is the culture and environment welcoming?
Website Redesign
How can I create a clean, elegant, and fun website that both highlights my work and reflects my artistic style?
The main pain points that derived from the first iteration consisted of the website’s lack of visibility and organization of the projects and the loading time of each page. But the biggest concern is its lack of personality.
"Timeless Me" as Inspiration
I had chosen the color palette, style, font simply because I thought it was visually appealing. But when I looked at the website, I felt like it did not reflect me. With that being said, I focused the redesign on expanding one of my previous projects, "Timeless Me.".
The project was to create a topology that helps understand "who" and "what" has formed my sensibilities and ideas.
As a result, I wanted to create a timeless timeline of the roles that I had embodied in my life.
I chose visually assets that would reflect that. For example, thin lines show a certain elegancy and fragility of journey as an artist. Yellow is used to convey intellect, attention, and fun, and circles represent energy, cycle, life, and wholeness.
The typefaces that I chose was inspired by an article called "Four Techniques for Combining Fonts." One of the techniques that they suggested was to "mix typefaces with similar proportions and give each a different role."
“Hoefler & Co.” Combining Fonts | Hoefler & Co., www.typography.com/techniques/index.php.
Guidelines Considered
I used these visual assets to create a wireframe for my website. This wireframe, however, also became a form of inspiration due to Squarespace’s template restrictions. There are many benefits to using Squarespace as it keeps the interface, consistent, clean, and easily updatable, but the limitations definitely contributes to the redesign challenge.
And the Redesign Continues...
For the second iteration, I focused on addressing three areas: visual interface, content, and overall experience.
Visual Interface: Use of Images
Why are they multiple ways that the images are being displayed?
I care more about the content, visuals should be secondary to support what you want to say.
Content: More Narration
Who are you? Why should I care?
What is your role? What impact did you make?
What were the challenges that you had to overcome?
Overall Experience
I wish that I had a brief description of each project up front.
As a recruiter, I would like easy access to your resume.
Is there any specific order for the projects that you want to showcase?
In Written Form
The same style and tone was applied to my resume.
No longer hidden under the tab “about”, the resume can be easily accessible on the homepage. Focused largely on revising the content to make it more understandable and concise. For example, it was a lot easier to read the skills when they were categorized. The size and font was also adjusted. Though consistency is valued, readability was of greater importance.
