Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
Look and feel
By considering your content and creating quick sketches of your page and its
elements, you've started designing the look and feel of your portfolio. Your sketches
should suggest the size of your navigation elements and their placement. Now you
have to think about what style or theme you'll use, as well as how people will interact
with your design decisions.
Even if you are using the wrapper as a portfolio project, it shouldn't be fighting
with your other work for attention. That doesn't mean that your interface can't be
visually arresting. It means that it should be appropriate to who you are, who your
audience is, and what your work is about.
Once you concentrate on your look and feel, it's easy to forget the rigorous way
you've approached your process and give way to well-known portfolio excesses. If you
adhere to your basic schematics, the portfolio will still function. But you want a port-
folio that is both functional and visually satisfying. In order to ensure this: remember
to KISS.
KISS stands for Keep It Simple, Seriously. Simplicity is the most important vir-
tue in portfolio design. You'll find it easier to create a clean and simple interface by
keeping these guidelines in mind:
•
Look for a design idea that will be easy to create.
If you will have to
spend hours making your navigation elements, they are probably too eye-
catching for a portfolio.
• K
eep animated actions small and discreet.
Even better, limit your actions
to ones that happen when a mouse rolls over a button. There is nothing more
distracting than buttons that flash or change color or shape when a visitor
hasn't done anything to activate them.
•
Limit your color palette.
Especially if you don't have a lot of experience in
design, select two colors plus black and white. Make all your interface ele-
ments variations of one color. (Start with the pure color at rest, make a
brighter version on rollover, and a darker version when you click.)
•
Don't fight with your artwork.
It's the reason you're making a portfolio,
isn't it? Keep it the focus of each page.
•
Think twice about your background.
A good designer can integrate a subtle
texture or photograph into their presentation beautifully, but there are more
wrong ways to do this than right. Do it wrong, and your background, not
your work, becomes the main event. If you're new to interface design, and
