This project is certainly the one I’ve learned the most from. It all started at the beginning of the 2025 summer vacation, when I thought it would be great to have a better way to showcase my work than just LinkedIn. Posting about the hackathons I attend is nice, but it doesn’t really allow me to present the development work I do, nor to share my design projects. At that time, I was finishing my first year of engineering school and wanted to learn something beyond our classes. A friend of mine, who was a frontend web developer, already had a portfolio that he showed me during the PSU GameJam we attended together. That’s when I decided to create mine as well.

This project turned out to be a long one, as design was only a small part of the whole work. I'll share more about it on the dev side of this project, but over the summer I learned several languages. I already knew the basics of web development (HTML/CSS/JS), but I completely relearned JavaScript, then moved on to React, Tailwind CSS, and Next.js.

Now, about the design part. It took me more than two weeks to define the overall design of this website, starting from scratch to define the style, navigation, accessibility, and overall efficiency of the interface. I worked page by page, starting with the ‘Home’ page. While experimenting with Figma, I came up with the idea of inserting some assets to give the website a blueprint-like design, leaving visible construction lines, measurement rules, and markers as part of the look. I created graphical assets such as the red wrapped arch pattern with Adobe Illustrator. On the ‘About’ page, I remembered a few tricks to create a fairly realistic chrome-like effect in Illustrator, applied to complex shapes. That’s what I used, and it sparked another idea: “What if I associated one material with each page?” That’s what I did for the ‘Arts’ section, where I chose glass - more specifically fluted glass - for its nice contrasts, repeating patterns, and interesting light-bending effects. I placed it against a black background to evoke a photography studio atmosphere. Photography is something I love and often integrate into my art creations.

By the time I’m writing this, I haven’t finished the design yet. I still need to complete the ‘Dev’ and ‘Contact’ sections. I already have some ideas in mind, but nothing set in stone for now. It will be as much a surprise for you as it is for me!