My New Portfolio!

This is by far my favorite project we've ever done. All the pre-projects really helped understand what I was doing and gave me some good and bad examples of what my page should look like. As soon as I made the design pre-project, I fell in love with the one page portfolios and how easy they flow and explain what you do without overwhelming the viewer. I also figured out that I love animations and transitions, so that was something I for sure wanted to include in my portfolio because I found it super interesting and it spiced up the page a bit.

Alright so. When I first started this project, I was still super excited about it. I knew it'd be a little easier then the others and I get more creative freedom with it. Still, there were some definite obstacles in the way. When trying to figure out my name on the starting page, there was originally a slogan in there, but it all looked too clashing with the buildings and you couldn't read it that much. Okay so now you have just you're name and that still overlaps the building and looks weird. I played around with the different css files and figured out how to change the div, but I'm still not sure if I should put a slogan on. I don't know if it's beneficial or not.

In the end, I'm really happy with my portfolio and I really do think it accurately represents the modern aspect that I'm going for when doing client sites. It represents me as a web designer, and more importantly, it shows where I come from, Kansas City. Home of the royals and home of Ava Yerkes, freelance web designer.

To visit my site, click this link: Ava's Portfolio

TV25 Review

TV25 was an interesting project, and probably a client project that I learned most with, even though I never actually worked 1 on 1 with him. We started off with a basic client meeting, which went really well in my opinion, and I created my sketch to the side. I was proud of this sketch and soon made a mock up of my site, which turned out differently then expected, but still cool and professional. Then our client came back and took a look at our sites, wasn't too impressed with mine, and just kind of skipped past it and then suggested other out-of-the-box ideas that seemed impossible (or took a long time to make). After that, I got another client, and figured he wouldn't pick my site anyway, butt still made a site nonetheless. I like my site, there's defiantly some things to fix, such as he wanted something for deals to slide through on, his social media, but I felt I didn't have enough time to make everything he wanted it to be. Overall, this was a fun project, and a good learning experience with a client that has different tastes then you do. See my site here: TV25

Sam's Sports Merch

Logo 2.0

These are my two final logos. I really liked the more feminine feel to it, especially since gymnastics in more targeted towards girls. I liked the darker purple originally because it just appealed more to me and makes it seem more sophisticated and not too kiddish, and that's what I feel when looking at the lighter pink. I feel that the darker purple will give off a good impression about the business and that any ages are welcome, rather then just little girls.

New Logo

These are my newly revised logos. The comments I got really liked these two logos in particular, and most of them also said to try out different fonts for the word sports, although I ended up still liking my original one the best. None of them really appealed to me too much, and I couldn't find any fonts that I was crazy about. Nonetheless, I still tried some other ones. Let me know what your thoughts are.

Sam's Sports

Sam's Sports is a gymnastics place. At first, I went for real fonts and then I started drawing them on my own. I did a signature type font and really liked how that looked, but also tried curly ends and really liked how it looked like a ribbon in rhythmic gymnastics. 

Wordpress vs Wordpress

Wordpress.org

• You host the server
• You pay for your server and have to keep the web server (Wordpress.org itself is free to use though)
• You get your own domain name
• You get more flexibility, range, and options (plug-ins, themes, and code)
• You can add in ads and make money from it
• Recommended by a majority of websites over Wordpress.com

Wordpress.com

• Wordpress hosts the server
• Cheaper/free
• Domain name includes Wordpress.com
• Can't have custom themes
• Hosting service ranges from $36-$5000 a month 
• Automatically backs your website up for you
• There is ads on your page, but you don't get money from it
• You can't see any statistics of your page
• They have the power to delete at any time if they think it goes against their policy

Conclusion: Most websites prefer Wordpress.org because it's gives you more free range to do whatever you want, and in the end it's probably cheaper then Wordpress.com, you just need to keep up the site yourself. 

Sources: themes.com, wpbeginner.com