Ash Blue Web Design

Why My Last Portfolio Was a Disaster

Almost two years ago I created Floating City Designs to bring my artistic abilities into the online art fray. Back then I had no clue how to market my services. Here I have complied several serious design mistakes I committed that will hopefully prevent you from doing the same.

Inconsistent content updates

Problem: On Floating City Designs content updates were in huge chunks. For instance, I performed a complete site overhaul with two new blog entries in the course of a week by skipping sleep and downing large quantities of coffee. Then I didn’t update anything for the next three months. Inconsistent website updates looked terrible, plus everybody frowns when they see that the newest post is from three months ago.

Solution: Spread out content updates and website changes with progressive enhancement by starting basic and improving content over time. Write posts ahead of time and schedule their release a week apart. This will help delivery, increase quality, and minimize stress with your current workload.  As I did for Ash Blue Web Design, I highly suggest writing out a long term agenda with specifically planned articles and site changes to balance content updates.

Branded to death

Problem: Branding can kill your business like poison slowly coursing through its veins. For instance, Floating City focused so much on the idea of a floating city that people expected the structure branded into everything I presented. This isn’t always necessarily bad, but it quickly constricts against creativity. To make matters worse, my focus was on the business world and not grunge death metal (as the color scheme and graphics scream).

Solution: If its branded badly enough you just have to drop the ball and start over. This is always a last resort option, but when you find a formula that works for a business identity, stick with it, and don’t change anything. I have several friends who’ve been very successful branding their services, then changed things so drastically customers thought they had visited a completely different website. If you want to see the pinnacle of terrible branding, look at the atrocious Pepsi branding from last year.

No content management system (CMS)

Problem: Without a CMS I was forced to painstakingly update all of my website’s content by hand. Therefore further contribute to my inevitable carpel tunnel from being a web designer. This made it extremely difficult to update the content everyone was coming to my website for (portfolio, services, and blog). I did attempt to use Movable Type for a short period of time, but it wasn’t documented very well. At least well enough for someone who has never worked with a content management system.

Solution: Get a CMS! There are many out of the box solutions that have great documentation for customization such as WordPress, Drupal, and Magento. No CMS means less content on the internet. Less content and updates equals less traffic for your website. I guess no CMS would work in some rare cases for small websites, but going without one for a long term campaign should never be an option. Think about it this way, you can spend eight hours updating your website by hand or spend two hours doing it with a CMS.

Lack of Design Theory

Problem: How was I supposed to know that white text on a black background is the worst design solution ever for large amounts of reading? Regardless of whether or not I should have know, I felt like my eyes were going to black out after working on my old website every two hours. The color and placement of everything on Floating City was terrible, not much logic behind anything.

Solution: Read a blog with design theory like Smashing Magazine or pick up a college level design book like Universal Principles of Design. As a “Web Designer” you need to know design theory and there is absolutely no excuse for not learning or knowing it. If you are having trouble with placement of your content, try the 960 grid or using smaller blocks of text.

Suggested Reading

• How to start a blog
• Improved branding
• Top 10 Content Management Systems
• Detailed look at the 960 grid