Portfolio featured on "Weekly 30 Inspirational Websites"

My portfolio is part of the current "Weekly 30 Inspirational Websites" on the Design Your Way blog! Very exciting - I always love great feedback like this, just makes all the hard work on the site worth it. Thank you for including my site to Design Your Way!

If you did not find my blog through my online portfolio, you can check it out here and see for yourself.

Marian Bantjes

Yesterday I was introduced to the work of Marian Bantjes and wow, can you say attention to detail. She did an amazing die-cut poster for the Academy for Educational Development (AED) and some very neat typography pieces using...sugar!


I love typography and letter shapes, so her work makes for some great inspiration. Enjoy!

Portfolio Featured on "CSS Based"

My online portfolio is featured on CSS Based. I am very excited to have been selected to be in their gallery. I had to laugh when I first saw my site up there, because they chose the "Artsy" style of the site for the screen shot, which is my favorite too!

It's a good feeling to get positive feedback, after putting so much work into the structuring, designing and coding of the site. All the more motivation to get started on a new style to design for the portfolio... I am thinking maybe a winter theme, since it's getting colder; we'll see.

Painting: "Coit Tower"

This is an acrylic painting I just finished. It depicts the view from Lombard Street down toward Coit Tower in San Francisco. A recent trip to the beautiful city inspired this painting. It was done on a 16"x20" stretched canvas and is a gift to my future parents-in-law.

Tracking Site Visitor Traffic

Now that the portfolio is up and running, I've started thinking about implementing a tracking system to see how site visitors interact with my portfolio. I was very much focused on trying to create a user-friendly experience, and as if it was meant to be, I came across a great post today about different ways to track traffic.

I knew about Google Analytics of course, but I didn't realize you could map where on the page people click or how long they look at a particular section. After checking out a few of the suggested tools, it seems that Google will still be the best option for me.

There were a few tracking tools that I would not consider for most of my projects (but for some, very few, it might be a good option). I am not a big fan of intrusive traffic analysis, such as pop-up surveys. Also, while I can see how recording every move the user makes on flash video will tell you a lot about how one interacts with your page, but it just seems like that should only be utilized if the user agrees to it.

I'll have to read up a little more on the topic, but I hope to add the tracking system very soon.

Single Page Portfolio Sites

There is a great post on single portfolio pages at Web Designer Wall and it got me thinking about my own portfolio organization. When I decided to redesign my portfolio, I was considering doing a single page, but I decided that a more complex site would be more beneficial in displaying my skills as a designer and a developer.

I think the skill gap between design and development may be a big factor when designers decide to create an online presence in one or multiple pages. A single page allows you to show that you are web savvy, at least to an extent, and know the importance of digital media, without having to do much linking and coding. A multiple page portfolio, on the other hand, lets you draw in the user through more than just graphics. I try to make most of my pieces interactive, print or digital, so a single page wouldn't really be "me." I want the user to "hang out" on my page in a way and see that there is more to it than just the plain information it presents. The experience of impacting where the portfolio takes you and the option to go in many directions from any place in the site is what makes a web site successful.

A single page portfolio, though, has the advantage of presenting everything in one place. This makes it easy for the user to see all the information he could want without much effort, such as trying to figure out where the navigation links are and how the page is organized. However, if there is a lot of work and other information to be presented in a portfolio, a single page will not do. Logical organization is the only thing that can make a vast amount of visuals and information accessible to visitors of the site. This presents a challenge - usability. The designer needs to see the site from a user's standpoint and make it equally effortless for the user to find his way around the site.

There is also something to be said about expectations. A multipage website is the norm, and thus most users intuitively look for navigation and organization because it is what they are used to. A single page site then may require an extra effort on the user side to realize that "this is it."

The details of the client, which in most online portfolio cases is likely the designer himself, should determine which way of organization is best. Such details may be the skill level of the designer, budget if the design is outsourced, amount of creative pieces and personality and style of the designer. Just like with any other job, a custom solution will satisfy the specific need of each portfolio project the best.

In the specific case of my online portfolio, I wanted to use it as a showcase of different design styles, so a single page would not work as well for that reason alone. However, a single page portfolio, when it is done nicely, can be very powerful, if the visitor never feels like the page is lacking interactivity or complexity.

Updated Online Portfolio

The portfolio now has photos in the "Sundry" section, most of them are from my San Francisco series. I also added more print and digital pieces. The next thing on my list is the "Featured Work" section - stay tuned!

New Online Portfolio Live

What a great feeling to have the new online portfolio up. After months of concepts, sketching, designing, coding and troubleshooting, the fruits of my labor are finally live and I am very happy with how it turned out.

The site explores different design styles and the viewer can decide which style he or she likes best and would like to view the site in. The user can switch the style of the site at any time. It took me a little bit to figure out how I would do this, but eventually I decided to use templates and CSS instead of a Javascript approach (in case someone does not have Javascript enabled).
Even though I am glad the site is finished, I wouldn't be a Graphic Designer if it really ever were "finished." I am excited to be adding more style options to the site (I am finishing up an Elegant theme right now) over the next few months. There is also a "Featured Work" section on the bottom of the page that will be updated frequently as I complete new projects. Instead of a static site, my portfolio is active and current, which was really important to me with this project.

I will put up the new style this weekend and also add some tidbits and more work samples to the site. If you want to check it out for yourself, go to www.stefaniedesigns.com.

Our Happy Pink Table

It's been a while since my last post, but I'm trying to be more on top of things from now on. It's not that we haven't been up to much, just finding those 10 minutes to post online seems to be a challenging task =)
Patrick and I have taken on a few furniture re-finishing projects. It's just much more rewarding to drop your house keys on a table that we sanded, cleaned, primed and painted, rather than something we simply bought. Of course my slight addiction to Craigslist has been of help; most of our apartment is furnished with Craigslist finds and the various roughed up pieces that are often for sale lend themselves to our new hobby. I'm really excited about a set of old typesetter printer's trays that I will be picking up tomorrow, I had never thought of it before, but since last week I have been exploring other parts of the site and strayed from my usual "Free" and "Furniture" sections.
On the left is our little entry table that used to be a light wood color. Between our dark hardwood floors, light wood IKEA living room furniture and this blond wood table, I just felt that there were one too many wood tones in the room. We used this piece as a trial to see if we liked the whole reviving furniture thing, and painted it a rich watermelon pink. I was expecting a bit more of a coral color, rather than pink, but I still love it. It's just so bright and happy, and it catches my eye now all the time when I walk into the room, rather than blending into our otherwise rather neutral palette. Stay tuned for more furniture makeovers to come! We have another couple of tables and an old telephone bench in the works.

Sharpshirter - Amazing T-Shirts

Ok, so I'm a little biased considering I am one of the designers who created graphics for Dan Lachman, but you have to take a look at www.sharpshirter.com. The T-Shirt designs are funny and clever, and the materials are supersoft and comfortable. Sharpshirter shirts have made appearances on TV and also in the Washington Post Express. The business is growing (now Sharpshirter offers LapTop Skins and I think soon dresses will be part of the merchandise) and becoming more and more popular (just look at the press section) - it's easy to see why!

The First Post...

For the past few years, whenever someone talked about blogs, I used to reply with "I never really got into that." I was happy living a blog-free life and didn't see much value in reading blogs, much less creating my own. And now I have given in.

I just transitioned form College life into the working world, and find that I finally have occasional free time - what a novel thought! I absolutely love design, and it seems to permeate all aspects of my life. I can't walk around Georgetown without trying to figure out the typefaces the stores use, or pointing out kerning issues. Naturally, I love to read about design, learn about design and see other people's designs.

When I searched for just plain "design" online, I stumbled upon design*sponge (www.designspongeonline.com), a blog about all types of design, and started reading it daily. Over the past weeks I found more and more blogs that are great resources for designers (one of my favorites is Design Float www.designfloat.com), and I finally realized what value blogs hold - they are current. It seems like a trivial thing, but it took me a while to see it. Good design blogs/forums/websites provide designers with tons of up-to-date inspiration and information to add to their knowledge of design. Reading the posts seems like a good way to stay fresh and see what's going on in the design world today. It is easy for a designer to get stuck doing things a certain way, and while having your own, distinct style is great, it can also limit your creativity if you don't get out of your comfort zone.

Well, that's why I decided to start my own blog, as part of my online portfolio. I am still working on redesigning my current one (muweb.marymount.edu/~s0g60406), so that whole thing is still in the works for now...

I hope to contribute to the design community by making a conscious effort to be involved in today's design world. This blog will discuss and display design. While I am a graphic designer and deal a lot with print and web design in a professional sense, I also incorporate my design knowledge into my daily life. I enjoy decorating my apartment (a big reason why I love the design*sponge blog), putting together outfits and making food look pretty, I also love to paint and draw. Design can be found everywhere and I love making it part of everything I do.

Whew, it looks like I made it through my first post... Wasn't all that bad =) Check back for design inspiration and discussions, craft projects, design resources and new works of mine!