Refreshing My Portfolio

I’ve recently started thinking about wrapping up my sabbatical, and as a result, I’ve started to tackle editing my portfolio to feel more “me.”

You know how people joke about spending months of effort and tons of money on their garden just to yield a few cucumbers they could have bought for a few dollars at the store? That’s what this process has felt like.

I’ve spent HOURS of time in front of the computer hand-customizing something I could have used a template for. I think my husband is starting to get worried about how many 2 AM working sessions I’m logging in the office getting something juuuuuust right. But it’s because this is the first time in a long time I’ve had fun - actual fun - designing. I was recently really skeptical about AI coding tools but I’m a total convert. And while it is more work, there’s something about homegrown that’s just better.

Over the last 4 days I’ve completely redone the architecture and styling of my entire site. It’s seriously been fun making little interactive carousels, a delightful nav component that reacts to my cursor, a dynamic “what time is it where I am” section, and an integration to use Notion as a CMS to populate my content. I can’t remember when I’ve felt so empowered and excited to explore and play.

Design, Adjust, Repeat

To begin, I used HTML to Design to scrape my existing site. There was a lot I liked about it, but over the years it had become bloated and overdone. I was explaining more than showing, and it felt old and outdated.

In Figma, I kept a copy of these editable files for posterity, and copied them into a new set of artboards to edit. From there, I made thoughtful cuts - I pruned it just as I’ve been pruning the trees at my house - looking for what feels unnecessary, or a laggy branch that takes energy away from the other main branches. Once I was pretty happy with where I landed, I waded into unfamiliar territory to build.

I’ve been playing with a side project - Waypoint - for a couple of weeks now and it has made me comfortable with the standard mechanics of using these tools to build and deploy. So I didn’t start from scratch exactly, but I was really only about 7-14 days deep into my working knowledge of what follows.

I leveraged Claude Code to help transform the artboards into a skeleton of a React website. I had no idea what best practices would be to set this file tree up, so I used this to springboard the repo creation.

Then, I cloned my repo into VSCode, because I like learning what parts of my file tree are being impacted when I make a change. From there, I installed the Claude plugin and leveraged it to make high-impact changes that I didn’t know how to kick off myself.

I’ve watched Claude edit something, and then I’ve forced myself to figure out what file was impacted. Once I know what file is being edited, I then open it and and make manual tweaks to save time, tokens, and energy. I’m keeping the dev tools panel open, inspecting containers and elements and making adjustments to sizing, border radiuses and color.

When I’m happy with the output, I release to my feature branch, check everything, and then push to main. Vercel handles the deployment and off we go. I’ve set up Notion to push my blogs posts to the site, and as I write this from bed, I’m hoping that when I wake up it’ll appear on the site. It did, yay.

Why now? Well, it’s becoming expected

I’ve really enjoyed using Squarespace for the last several years. Frankly, it’s a significantly easier tool to use, it’s priced in alignment with the rest of the tools on the market and it’s a totally suitable way to host a simple design portfolio. But like I said before, I needed more from it than what it could naturally do, and just felt that my site was turning into a Frankenstein of code blocks and markdown files. I simply needed a more consistent way to ensure page styles and consistency. And so I’ve shifted.

I’ve also had a few introductory calls with folks hiring for roles at my level and the feedback is often contradictory. Some people want to see simplicity in a portfolio and others demand personality. I had spiraled a little bit trying to shove all of the pieces of feedback coming my way - we need more depth! We need less depth! More images! Fewer images! Show me your range of all work! I only want to see the last 3 years of work!

What I’m trying to signal, and what I’m leaving out

• Case studies are intentionally high level. The work I’ve done is rooted in a lot of financial, trust, and regulatory spaces. None of this information needs to be public, and frankly I want to be respectful of the company’s product and workflows. Not everyone needs to know what happens in a financial or compliance flow, especially prospective bad actors. If someone needs to learn more, I’ll be happy to take a screening call.
• I stopped over-explaining. I’ve been doing this work for 16 years. There’s a lot I could say, but it’ll reveal itself in time. If people are looking at my work, it’s likely because they need signal that I’m someone who can / has operated at this level before, which I clearly have.
• I trimmed the fat. I used to include a variety of case studies about small projects or things I wasn’t particularly proud of. It wasn’t representative of my best, or even most interesting work. That’s just noise, and I’ve chosen to put my best foot forward instead.
• Calm by design. For a long time, I felt pressure to match the visual intensity of other portfolios - hyper-graphic treatments, dark palettes, oversized type. It didn’t quite align with my instincts or taste, but matching the predominant style felt like the expectation. My own taste leans more earthy, moody, and restrained. This version of my portfolio reflects that more honestly - it’s a closer expression of how I actually see and make things.
• I’m a playful, experimental designer. I’ve worked in corporate roles for years, but that’s not who I am as a person. I’m a systems thinker who’s very happy to throw the rulebook out and explore and play. I trust my gut to build something and land it, and I don’t feel constrained by process. This portfolio serves as a playground for fun and experimentation and I’m excited to keep tinkering.