Honestly, this was a phenomenal exercise.

I figured I would do something not super complicated for my first time only, so I decided to create a new home page for my portfolio site. 

I started just to sketch a basic idea, also writing out some key words about who I am and things that I feel make me unique.

 

 

After I created the sketch I decided on a word that I felt would best fit this situation and created it visually.

Original Concept:

I found this beautiful, colorful abstract image on unsplash. But for the real site I would use something that I had created personally.

 

Concept 2:

- Play with depth of field

- Create asymmetry

- Experiment with the opacity of things

- Free up some Elements

I added a gaussian blur as well as a motion blur to the background image because I enjoyed how it looked kinda like how the smudge tool does for images.

 

Concept 3:

- Section things off

- Make things symmetrical

- Experiment with a new palette

I never utilize the color green, so when I laid the gradients on top of this image, this one stuck out the most to me. I honestly love the way the the green and purple accentuates the texture.

 

Concept 4:

- Change your main type

- Desaturate

- Add flourish 

- Create some asymmetry 

I decided to add some icons (from flaticons) to visually express my different branches of my portfolio. 

 

Concept 5 (My favorite):

- Section things off

- Create more white space

- Slap on a substitute

When I was originally looking for a background image, this was one of the few I plucked up, and blue is my favorite color. What I really love about this image is how it's a painting that immolates water so well. I took out the words of my portfolio sections and used the icons from the last design. I also moved the menu hamburger down to the bar to be more visible.

 

Concept 6:

- Mix up the elements

- Experiment with opacity

Originally I had picked to also round the edges, and make your most important elements more bold, but once I got down to this design, I couldn't apply those. I was satisfied with this design. 

 

I learned A LOT from this exercise. It taught me how to push myself and create something new. Getting to better ideas faster. I'm thinking of designing the creative prompts into a poster to hang in my workspace, that way I can have something to reference when I get stuck!