My work and private projects, is to immerse myself into different brands, learning about audiences, learning from professionals, getting inspired.
Who or what I work on, become a part of me, for the duration, but also permanently. This has enriched my life. However , initially, as a young designer, I felt lost.
When it came down to having to present myself and all this work, in a cohesive matter, I had an idea of who I was as a designer, but without a solid foundation, I couldn’t say it with confidence.
I found it incredibly hard to present all this work in a way that made them individually make sense, present them in an accurate but beautiful way, the way I could for others.
I Chose the Color Rainbow
The first thing I did was a blank document, and I wrote my name in big bold letters, and build a mind map around it. My commercial work and personal projects. The things I think I’m good at. My favorite colors. Parts of my personality that people say they enjoy about me, and what I like about myself.
People describe me as creative, enthusiastic and bold, and I love that. With a personality so colorful, I hoped I could wear bold colors in my brand, the way I fearlessly wore colorful clothes.
Go big or go home. So I decided on the color “rainbow”. Cause, why not?
The shape of the logo came together, as a 3D shape of my initials. It kinda looks like an arrow pointing down. Which, also, kind of looks like the shape of a heart. if drawn with both sides equally long, and viewed from a tilted upward angle, looks like a heart. Representing love for my work, love for design, love for color, and giving myself permission to be proud of myself.
Back to the Whiteboard
When I finally pushed myself over establishing my personal brand. One of the few things that was clear to me was that I had to start fresh, clean the whiteboard, and restart from the beginning.
My goal was to both bring things back to basic, and think by making. I hoped that by giving it time, attention, and taking a step back, a clearer picture would naturally evolve. And by doing so, hopefully I’d be able to use how I’ve grown, and incorporate it in this new visualization of myself as a designer.
And by whiteboard, I meant a literal whiteboard. Clean, empty and ready to be painted on. Everything that would presented would need a neutral place to be presented, to give all individual works and projects, their place in the limelight.
Dark and Light theme Toggle
The more I learned about accessibility, and how people find ways to use the internet to empower themselves, the more I read about dark mode apps and websites.
I have to be honest here, I had a personal interest in any arguments for dark mode. Much of my day is spend behind a green, and I think it’s one of the reasons I prefer it, it’s just slightly easier on the eyes, in my opinion.
For the next iteration of the brand I knew I wanted to focus on making the design work for both dark and light. I found an easy to use WordPress plugin, and got to work.
This caused me to rethink a lot that I initially saw as essential to the design, but began to see as clutter. By splitting the design into two opposites which were still quite similar, I focused on simplification.
Commercial Work & Self-Initiated Projects
As content was added to the portfolio, and am updating some old content. The more I add, the more comfortable I am with all the work coming together. Moments like these still feel special.
I’m still very much a novice, and feel like this every day. But I can now see the growth, and am proud of it. I get the joy of being reminded of great projects I’ve worked on, and how they helped me grow.
Welcome to the Dark Side
Eventually, as I was trimming through redundant plugins, eventually I decided to remove the plugin I was using to toggle between light and dark mode.
The experiment with the dark mode toggle had run its course. It was a fantastic learning experience, and I hope to give this solution to a website more suiting.
The dark theme came out the winner. For months I only used the toggle to view what something would look like in a light mode. With any other work I was using the dark mode only.
My mobile, browsers and operating system are all in dark mode. My wardrobe is almost exclusively black, for convenience. It’s a fact that dark mode is a part of the identity of my brand. I’m finally in a place where I can embrace this, do what I like, and love what I do.
My Professional Focus
The primary nine categories are the different intersections of my work. Each has their own individual color scheme and rich media.
These showcase my professional and private projects. Additional to showing the final product, I want to talk about the work itself.
This is going to be a long term work in progress, but I want to give credit where credit is due, and share some of the amazing resource that I use and share content that has inspired me.
I want to somehow give back, the way the community gave to me. Not everything I say will always be correct. But I’m eager to learn and open to expertise and alternative perspectives.
