Is this a portfolio website?

The obvious topic for a first blog post on this website: Description why I made the site like this and not any other way.

Fictional comments and real answers

So somehow this doesn't look like a normal portfolio page you built for yourself.

What do you mean normal portfolio page?

Well, with borderless pictures and big headlines ...

It's just not me. I want to present my work, not a fake glossy magazine.

But it works much better with large pictures and only a little text and when everything is moving while scrolling.

Not for me, no. When I look for information and come to a page like that, I most likely will click away.

Why would you do that? They're often beautifully crafted.

It's just annoying to be jammed with hero images and animations and not to find any useful information, because there are only 3 words in large font sizes. Almost always the starting pages look like stock photo, although not the cheap ones. Standardised crap.

But yours seems a bit boring now, I can almost see only text.

Do you think so? I had spent a few hours working on a large animated graphic in the header. After 5 days I kicked it out again. Too arbitrary and bad for the performance of the page. Another 5 days I thought about what else could be there. Only then I realized: No need to do anything—all is fine as it is.

Uh, wait a minute - what is your problem with text? I think reading is still a great cultural technique.

You want to present your work and you have "visual media" written at the top and not copywriter or journalist.

Hm, funny, you say "written" - it seems to be of some importance. Well, I like reading AND looking at pictures. But the latter exactly when I want to. If someone is interested in the work, he or she clicks once and gets the big pictures. I find that priorities are often wrong in current design trends: I don't want to generate advertisements here anyway. I want something else.

You want to convince potential customers that you're the right person for them, don't you?

Yeah, sure, that's why. In my experience, customers need all sorts of things, even from time to time advertisements and hero images, but not primarily. For me, good designers are understanders, consultants and problem solvers. Which paths are to be followed is decided only in dialogue with the customer.

2017-11-17 ∙ Webdesign