Well It has only taken me 12 months to build this site. I went through 4 different versions over that period and wasn’t totally happy with any of them until I made this one. The only aspect that has stayed constant is the milk carton which I have always wanted to use in a design.

Version 2 utilised a side scrolling layout and a muted palette. I liked the overall idea but it was a bit to corporate and not very friendly. I also thought he side scrolling might confuse the audience and be seen as incompetence rather than experimentation.

Version 3 had bold colours and was no longer side scrolling. The elements were similar to version 2 but splashes of colour and little flourishes (like the scissors) made it more welcoming. I even created the portfolio pages, contact form and services pages before I hit a brick wall. The design just didn’t feel like it was me. It was too short, back and sides with a nice pair of brogues - I felt it painted a picture of me that wasn’t particular true to type.

A month ago I started working on Version 4. I decided to use my old pob‘n’me mashup as the main feature supported by the milk carton as a vertical “what I do”. I have subsequently used the pob’n'me picture on my social networking profiles. It is a bit of branding that can be consistent through out my online persona. Hopefully you see the ugly avatar and think of me!

I also choose the bright orange and lime green to be my link colours. They stand out and reminded me of tic tacs. I am an Everton fan and the following viral video was jumping in to my head enough to find it’s way on to the site.

The mismatching font types and ripped up paper was to make the design a bit more disoganised - pretty much like pob and myself.  The rough edges and juxistapostion against clean, sharp shapes makes for an interesting eye journey. It may be a bit busy for a portfolio site but I like the zesty effect.

I have used quite a few sites for resources, reference and inspiration whilst building this version of the site. Some of my favourites are:

http://sonspring.com/ - to removed the annoying firefox dotted border around your linked images.

http://www.smashingmagazine.com - this page helped me make sure I had the right functionality on the site. It also allowed me to get some inspiration from other portfolio websites.

http://css-tricks.com/ - an old but goldie header image replacement technique. Essential for good indexing of your site and accessability.

http://web-kreation.com/ - a very impressive quote form that I have used on this site. It is free, easy to configure and made my life much easier.

http://www.dafont.com - A superb resource for fonts on the internet.