Final Web Design Portfolio Reflection

     The Final Project Portfolio is the last project for all of Web Design and is the ultimate showcase of the abilities and skills we gained over all 3 years of the academy. I started work for the portfolio from a long time back and wanted to make the most professional-looking, clean website I could. I started by looking at the final portfolios from the previous years to get ideas about what I wanted in my own portfolio. I figured out I wanted a loading screen to play when the user first reached my site. I wanted to make this loading screen unique so I considered many different options, including a spinning favicon, but decided on an animation where my initials were signed on the screen to give the feeling of how an artist signs their work. For the website itself, I planned 3 pages: the main homepage, a page for all my labs, and a page for all my projects. The main page would tell the user about myself and contain links to the 3 other portfolios as well as the labs page and project page. The labs page would display all the labs I've ever done in Web Design and the project page would do the same but for my projects. The main page was very thoroughly planned out, having 4 sections: home, about, skills, and works. Home was just a parallax cover graphic with titles indicating this was indeed my portfolio. Included in these titles was a link that would take the user to the About section. The About section was a short bio of myself explaining what I learned over my years in Web Design, what the portfolio was about, and other personal details about myself. The Skills section was basically the skills section from my resume, highlighting my employability. Finally, the works section contained the links to all my portfolios as well as the labs and projects page.

     Over the course of actually developing this portfolio, I've had to make a few design changes. Originally, I had planned to go with a blue, white, and orange color scheme but decided to go with a red, white, and blue scheme since it looked much better. The navigation for my portfolio was planned to be a complicated hamburger menu with a lot of links but I decided to go with a simple fixed topnav since it was much simpler and looked better. Finally, I decided to make a websites and games collection rather than a labs and projects page. This came down to 2 reasons, I was running low on time so I couldn't spend the amount of time needed to include the sheer amount of labs I've done on one page and while I could feature all my labs and projects on one page, if I'm showing this portfolio to prospective employers, I'd much rather have them look at my best works than a sea of decent labs and projects. For these reasons, I decided to make a page demonstrating my ability to create and manage websites and a page demonstrating my programming skills, especially when making videogames.

     With all this done, all our years in this academy and high school, the good time, the bad times, the laughs, and the tears, we are about to begin a new chapter of our lives. Many of us will attend college seeking a major in CS or another STEM major. Our years in Web Design have prepared us for a lot of the things we'll encounter in college when going down such path. Many of us will also seek employment soon, perhaps in the web design field, so this portfolio serves as a means for us to showcase our best skills and abilities, helpful in seeking employment. With this portfolio done, we are finished designing and developing for high school and are moving on to college and the real world. Yet, as we set foot in unchartered lands, this portfolio is a reference to show just what we are capable of and what we should strive to exceed in the future.