Welcome to the Treehouse Community

Want to collaborate on code errors? Have bugs you need feedback on? Looking for an extra set of eyes on your latest project? Get support with fellow developers, designers, and programmers of all backgrounds and skill levels here with the Treehouse Community! While you're at it, check out some resources Treehouse students have shared here.

Looking to learn something new?

Treehouse offers a seven day free trial for new students. Get access to thousands of hours of content and join thousands of Treehouse students and alumni in the community today.

Start your free trial

Design

My portfolio - Still in development

The content needs some work, but I just want my site live to test on different devices.

Just an example of what I have learnt over the past two years. Team Treehouse certainly peaked my interest in code, and taught me a lot. I do however have the bonus of working in a web company as a designer, while learning how code, so lots of support.

http://www.michaeltrilford.co.nz

Peace.

8 Answers

Alan Johnson
Alan Johnson
7,625 Points

Wow Michael! That's outstanding. Really really great looking portfolio site.

Big Wow.

Michael, did you learn all that from treehouse only or from the company? meaning that if you didn't go to the company will you be able to build something similar with what you have learnt from treehouse?

Kevin Korte
Kevin Korte
28,148 Points

Solid work man. Looks legit!

Thanks guys.

@Suli S

I would say I learnt HTML, CSS, basic JS /jQuery from Treehouse. On top of that, I get to use the things I learn in real life projects, which helps understand the language quicker I guess.

I majored in Graphic Designer about 7 years ago, which was a 4 year university degree ( Bachelor of design ). This obviously helps with the design side of things.

I love Treehouse by staying up to date with code and new techniques, hope that helps. Suli S

Melissa Bornbach
Melissa Bornbach
6,675 Points

Great site. :) Thanks for sharing.

This looks very nice. Have you tested across multiple devices yet? I checked it out on my iPhone 4S and it is very stellar, and I must say your design work is really awesome! Did you design all of the graphics yourself (I assume that is a yes)? I'm sure a lot of people would want to know how long did it take you. I'm not referring to how long to code, but how long did the whole process take?

Corey Baker

I have a 4S also, so I have checked on that. But I have yet to do testing on other devices. I'm assuming that it will be pretty good on multiple devices ( with up-to-date browsers ), as it is a fluid layout.

I think it took me a fair bit of time! I worked it out, and it was just over a year to actually have something I was happy with. Creating a fluid site, everything had to be perfect, so there was a lot of crafting :p. To be honest, I think I just gazed at it half the time, to try work out how to simplify it.

It was a fun journey :)

Aaron Chiandet
Aaron Chiandet
9,826 Points

I have to echo what everyone else has said, beautiful site. The only piece of constructive criticism I would share is I don't know how I feel about the way you present your work. Meaning you lead them on the path, they don't have a choice to click on a certain project and then view it. But that's splitting hairs, not knocking the work by any means.

Out of curiosity, what does your design process look like? Did you do a rough mock or lay it out in its entirety in PS? Like you, I started as a designer a long time ago and I recently started doing responsive sites which has changed my whole process. I can't say that I've found anything that I'm fully comfortable with like I was back in the day when we would just do PS mocks.

I do agree. I will look to enhance the site at some point.

Process:

I just used some pen and paper, then started mocking up what I wanted in the browser. After that, I needed to do some experimenting with the layout, so I went into photoshop and played around with some ideas. But only did what I needed to do to have the "vision".

The way I design websites is very different now, I spend most of the time in the browser and try render every visual component through CSS. Obviously there are those times you need to create something unique, which is when I dip into photoshop/illustrator.

I like to take a screenshot of the in-browser mockup, and try do something interesting with it in photoshop.

I love things being "pixel-perfect", not in terms of the site looking exactly like what the Photoshop comp looks like, but being structured on the baseline grid etc, something which is far easier to create with CSS, than Photoshop :)

So a recap,

» I wireframe » I setup my CSS so the baseline is correct. » Moodboard ( Images of my preferred direction. ) » I start designing in the browser ( Mainly focusing on the layout ) » Study it for days :) » Experiment with the layout in Photoshop, just using a screenshot to start with. ( Keeping it crude ) » Develop the site further

Something like this.

I watched this the other day, pretty much sums up my design process these days:

http://www.webstock.org.nz/talks/a-birds-eye-view-of-a-modern-web-designers-workflow/