The final assignment in English 301 was to create a web folio. I have limited experience creating web pages that will ever be seen by another human and the experience I do have almost always involved a much more creative person hovering behind me telling me what everything should look like. In my own projects I generally prefer to work on server-side applications and get by using basic templates for any user interface they require for testing. I found it interesting to have to approach this assignment from another direction.
Content
This was the easiest part of the web folio for me to complete since there was no real visual component to it and all of the content was already created. I went over the assignments I decided to post and made some edits to the spelling and grammar. I also reviewed the peer reviews of the assignments I posted and made sure the assignments reflected the suggested edits. For social media I decided to include my LinkedIn profile as required in the assignment description and my Github profile as it showcases the projects I have worked on and am currently working on. I decided not to include other social media such as Twitter because I feel that those profiles do not add anything particularly interesting to my folio.
Design
I have worked closely with the creative director at Skunkwerks Kinetic Industries over the past year implementing the user interface for the game we are creating so most of my design decisions can be traced back to his style. This primarily led to a minimalist approach that values clear delivery of content over nice visuals or fancy formatting. After investigating some alternative themes I decided to stay with the theme I chose for this site at the beginning of the term as it has a very clear layout and I find it very easy to navigate.
Visuals
This was the hardest part of the web folio for me. In past projects I find I often get carried away with the visuals on a page to a point where it is difficult to navigate or view the content which is exactly what I did not want to do for this assignment. I decided to only use a header image, an imge of myself on the biography page and the Skunkwerks Kinetic Industries logo on the home page. Although other images might be nice I feel that they do not add that much to the other pages.
Final Thoughts
In the end I found this assignment to be quite enjoyable. It was nice to go back and review my work from the different units of the term and see my improvement and what I need to work on. In the future I know I will end up creating a professional portfolio once I have more work to showcase and I think this web folio helped me figure out quite a few things about creating an online portfolio.