Its been a while since I blogged, it almost felt like that I was shying away to post. The making of the portfolio was a roller coaster experience for me. All my plans got delayed as it took me a while to craft the portfolio. None the less portfolio is live and it’s available at : https://sumgup.github.io/portfolio/

What did not go well

1. It took me a while to get to the current stage of portfolio.
2. Initial estimates were incorrect.
3. I did not stick to a particular approach - I started with Bootstrap, later when I saw portfolio of other designer I got carried away and started using fancy js frameworks. Although I gained knowledge around those frameworks but I lost time. Later I realized that Bootstrap is great css framework.
4. The problem with designing portfolio gets amplified by looking at several designers portfolio. When you start coding it you want everything effects like Parallax, full page scrolling, animation etc.
5. Perfection is the killer - I think I was aiming for perfection and thats where it went wrong.
6. Missing concepts of web design - This is an important one, when I took crash course of web design I realised that Typography itself is such a powerful thing that it could convey a lot. Instead of fancy animations investments in Typography can give desired results.
7. Focus on education first - Being a developer I was tuned to think that I can figure things out fast but designing is a different. If I could have given importance to design it would have been lot easier.

What went well

1. Learned web design - Not an expert but my journey to web design has started. I feel excited to learn more about it.
2. Self Expression - I like to express myself and I carried the same to my portfolio website. Writing about myself and sharing my journey gave me lot of mental power, I realised my past accomplishments and failures.
3. FAQ - I really liked the idea of FAQ on About me section, anyone can get an idea of what kind of person I am before we start working together. My belief is that compatibility matters when working together. If someone doesnt like my personality why will he do business with me?

My inspiration from FAQ and lot other ideas came from this Gregor’s blog : http://gregor.smallgreendog.com/

Road Ahead

I believe this project of portfolio gave me a lot of learning and Its not the end but a beginning of it. I have already started maintaining a list of features on my trello list and categorised them with MOSCOW method. Will have to keep on working on it.

Already late by 6 weeks for my plan, another big milestone that is remaining is learning how to prototype. I have already started prototyping my case study on Figma. Its a great tool to learn. Once prototyping is done, will make edits on the portfolio. With each of these steps I am getting near to phase where I can go out of the house.