So this is it, the new site has finally been launched!  Many of you have been waiting a long time for any change to my site, let alone a complete remake.  The old site was dated because it did not show my current web designing skills and no longer represented me the way I felt my online portfolio should.  I started working on this revision of my site a couple months ago and have not looked back at my old site since.

Some of you might notice that new site resembles Apple.com, and you are correct. I took much of my inspiration from Apple because I like the style and minimalist look of their site and wanted to challenge myself to duplicate it as a study for future web development. By studying or replicating another artist’s work, one can learn new ways to think about their own methods, techniques, and workflows; I definitely learned a lot doing this project.

I wanted to give the site a more professional feel by not having my blog be the first page you see.  The homepage now highlights one of my articles as the main content.  I thought this would be a good way to direct people to a new piece of artwork or a important event in my life.  Below that is a series of four smaller boxes that highlight four main categories of my blog, My Life (news form my personal life), My Work (new artwork or tutorials), My Freetime, (media reviews and gadgets), My Goodness (random articles or awesomeness).

The blog has become easier to use in a lot of different ways. The entire blog is now driven by ajax, which means much snappier loading of content without having to reload the entire site. The new search feature highlights the words you search for in the articles it returns. I have also added a blog navigation bar that can be used to filter the posts in my blog by their categories and dates. My sidebar now contains more dynamic information like my Facebook/Twitter status, recent Flickr pictures, my Pandora activity, and my latest run using Nike+. This way even if I don’t update my blog for a while, the content on my page never gets completely stale. I plan to add more sidebar features in the future as well.

The portfolio and résumé sections of my site have changed quite a bit as well. The static way my old portfolio was displayed drove me nuts, so I designed a much more interactive and colorful way to display my work. I also added descriptions and dates for the majority of my work to let people know more about it. My résumé was also in desperate need of some style, so I tried to add some color and even some humor by incorporating images into a new layout.

Anyway, enough talking… cruise around the site and let me know what you think. I will be adding more features and doing some tweaking over the next couples weeks so let me know if you run into any issues. Glad to be back!