Portfolio Site

I created a portfolio site for my final.

I’m actually surprised I got as far as I did because I was on the verge of tearing my hair out a few times. It took me forever to decide on a color scheme I felt I could live with (still subject to change) and the right CMS to power it. I did go with WP-Folio after all because it ended up being way more intuitive than Stacey.

Everything is lorem ipsum placeholder text for now because I couldn’t quite decide what kind of content I wanted to populate it with. I also plan to buy the candiceholmes.info domain name and redirect it there once I feel it’s in good enough shape to actually show someone. Working that out is my winter break project.

Portfolio Decisions

I’m still torn on what platform to host my portfolio site on. The look and colors are pretty much already decided, but I don’t know if I want to use this new platform called Stacey or hacked combo of a found WordPress template + WP-Folio that is pretty close to what I envisioned before.

The Stacey template so far:

Week #10: Info Graphics

I ended up really taken by the Wordle application and decided to use that to do a work graphic out of my blogs.

I used the Coolvetica font on my personal blog’s visualization:

The biggest words here were: school, fear, trying, and back.

The ITP blog visualization used a font called Kenyan Coffee:

The main words here were: museum, interesting, space, contemporary, and community — all having to do with my thesis project.

Week #9: Site Architecture and Color

I’ve been thinking a lot about what I put into a portfolio site. Earlier in the semester, I was applying for an internship and was asked if I had one. I used to be a project manager and most of my time was spent chasing people around and number crunching — something hard to combine with a pretty background. But what’s been great about ITP is the fun little projects I’ve done (some I’m more proud to show off than others), so perhaps this exercise will be a good way to organize myself for my post-school work future.

I sketched out my initial idea of a site architecture:

But afterwards thought that work and projects could be combined into one area and the resume link could go to the spot that Work occupied in the sketch.

In thinking of color schemes to move forward with, I think of the evolution of my old personal blog over the years. I’ve always been attracted to pretty clean palettes with a small bar of color at the top.

The themes I was most attracted to in the Color Scheme Designer tended to be monochromatic blues and oranges:

Though I also liked this purple with a yellow complement:

Week #8: Color Theory

Week #7: Color Test

My results:

A big mistake I made on the test was trying to take it on my netbook screen and with no glasses on. Some of the colors just blurred into one for me. I need to retake it on a bigger screen and not squinting just to compare the results.

Week #6: ITP Logo Design

I had a kernel of an idea of what I wanted to do from the start. I usually explain ITP to people as a technology-based art program and in class last week, the electron orbit randomly popped in my head as something that could be used as a symbol.

I made some sketches at home and the orbit ended up in 3/9 drawings:

Later, I did an experiment with type in Photoshop to find something I thought would fit with the symbol:

I ended up with this as the final rendering:

The font is Terminal and I thought it fit because of the connection to computer type. The electron orbit almost looks hand drawn scaled down so far, so it adds the artistic element.

Homework #5: Logo Design Fave

I decided to choose Peter Arnell/The Arnell Group as my focus for this week’s assignment about favorite logo designers.

Arnell has been in the news lately because of the new book he’s written about his life in advertising and his 250lb weight loss. I’m kinda interested in it as an overview of his work process, but couldn’t care a bit about how eating oranges constantly (one of the pieces of advice according to the reviews) will help you lose weight. It was an interesting assignment because I knew about the Tropicana redesign (which I actually liked), but finding out he’d done DKNY and Con Ed too was a pleasant surprise. I have a friend who worked for him (with mixed things to say), but I think he’s one of the few old style creatives with a definite design aesthetic left.

Arnell Group Logos

Homework #4: Business Card

I had a few inspirations for my cards.

The collection of cards I’ve gotten from others:


A postcard from an old campaign I worked on:

At the end though, I was torn between fonts and the back design, so I made 3 different ones:

1) The typography style I was leaning towards the most + a quote
2) The original typography I scrapped + the picture I ran through a few photoshop filters
3) The 2nd typography style + the picture

Homework #3: Name and Words

This week’s assignment involved two experiments in typography: choosing fonts to display my own name and to make expressive words.

My name is unique in that it has a lot vowels and curvy letters. It was interesting seeing how different font weights and styles actually made a difference to me aesthetically. I use Open Office on my computer, so I think I ended up with a few different fonts that many others would have.

The expressive words was fun, but hit or miss for me because I’m not that great with photoshopping. I chose lost, scattered, and windy (the weakest of the three I think).

Name and Words