So I am pretty much finished with Jamesvec 2010. When I set out to create this portfolio, I really sat down and thought about what I wanted to accomplish with it, what I could learn from it, and how I could streamline the process of creating it. If we take a look at the list I made when conceptualizing the portfolio and the things I wanted to do you would LOL at the result. Its not really that close.

This is something that I am not sure is unique to me as a designer. I would love to hear from people about their process and result. It is so interesting to me in fact that I am going to put together a section of concepts that have been thrown away. The mock-ups that did not make the cut. All the stuff in-between concept and result.

First let’s take a look at this list I put together when I started to think about re-designing my portfolio.

James Vecchio 2010: Portfolio Concept

I. Lessons to be learned

1. Use wordpress as a fully functioning cms

2. add section for jquery experiments (fading background colors, menu in center with sliding page nodes)

3. Try to show off new As3 skills by adding some flash nodes

4. Better use of type and white space

5. Be able to explain every element on the page, don’t add anything that does not need to be there.

II. Design Concept

1. Exercise in depth (I want to create a portfolio that has smooth contures, the surface should look almost liquid)…LOL!

2. Use of subtle gradients to give the appearance of depth…LOL!

3. Break the box model wherever possible… LOL!

4. Add depth by stacking items and adding blurs… LOL!

5. Create a useable blog interface so that you can start writing and advertising yourself.

6. Minimal interface

Phase 1. sketches

pencil sketches

Phase 2. type

font choices(I want to use a serif and a san serif and pull it off)

Phase 3. color

choose colors(approx 3 and a highlight color)

Yeah some of these I did, some of them not so much.  ”3. Try to show off new As3 skills by adding some flash nodes” I wrote that…..

After creating the wire frames I decided to move away from the depth concept I had originally set for myself. After thinking about it for a while I realized that a lot of my work already contained gradients and hardly any used just flat color. I figured I could learn more by breaking from what I was used to doing

Now lets take a look at the wire-frames that got me to my result.  So below was the original Photoshop draft after my initial sketches

This was the next round

Then came COLOR….UGH Look at that horrible

The Final draft:

Some of the ideas didn’t work out quite as I had envisioned them, but for the most part it is pretty spot on. With this design I did not go through nearly the amount of iterations as I usually do with an actual client. Usually we will look at several designs before we reach something that we are both happy with.

The Final result was very different from what I had set out to do with the initial design concept. Is this something that is common amongst designers, or do you try and stick with what you had originally planned? I find that the end result is usually far different from what I had set out to do most of the time, weather it be client changes it just did not seem right to me once I got started.

I plan to dedicate a section of my blog to these unused concepts. I will post draft versions of projects that I have worked on that just did not make the cut for one reason or another so that they can be compared with the final version.