4 years ago I created my first portfolio website.

Here is the hero section.

Now that you've finished laughing (and/or cringing), I had no clue what I was doing. I felt like I was improving my skillset as a developer, but did not have a single creative bone in my body to showcase. It was frustrating to iterate through different font sizes, typography, images, and layout, only to end up settling on something that you know looks mediocre. I couldn't seem to locate the right side of my brain.

A few weeks ago I decided to revisit my unhosted portfolio page and completely overhaul it. Instead of building my page using Javascript's framework of the week, I would leverage Webflow and Figma.

Learning new tools

Having never created a website using either of these tools, I searched for a course that could instill some confidence in this quest to create a page that doesn't make me completely unhirable.

I purchased this course https://www.udemy.com/course/freelance-web-design-from-design-to-development-to-making-money/

I spent my afternoons learning the ins and outs of Figma design. I learned about concepts and techniques such as color matching, typography, visual hierarchy, cropping, contrast, unboxing, remixing, and much more. 90% of this information was completely new to me. Like a lot of engineers, we are handed designs, and are concentration is honed in on executing the design to pixel perfection, not creating the thing.

I had never given much thought to design itself.

Getting Creative

Over the next week, I had committed much of my afternoons to practice the aforementioned techniques of web design, and to my surprise, I was improving rather quickly. It was like the iconic scene in The Grinch where his heart grew 3 sizes bigger. I think I could see the creative bone in my body beginning the grow. The course had given me tools (and a bit of confidence) that empowered me to make a visually appealing website on my own.

By the end of the course, I had created a my design.

I had done it.

What seemed unattainable due to the limitations I put on myself, I had created a portfolio site that I was proud of. With the help of Midjourney, the hero section of the site was vastly improved. The only thing left to do was take this design and implement it in Webflow. I won't bog you down with the details of getting the web page created, as it was simple and fast due to the fact I've done a ton of front-end work. The amazing part was the entire process of creating the design and building the site took less than 7 hours.

Conclusion

It's 2024. Designing a website has never been easier and will continue to become a non-issue with each passing day. That being said, learning the basics of good design will never go out of style as it rewires your brain as to what makes good design, and what design elements shape the story that you are trying to tell. Without this knowledge, it's easy to be frozen and always think 'How did they come up with that?'. Odds are that person thought the same thing when they were looking for inspiration for their next design venture. So if you think you are a non-creative, left-brained robot, odds are you just haven't found that creative bone yet.