- Organisation
- Personal work
- Year
- 2019
- In a word
- Mentoring
The challenge
I wanted a home for my landscape and outdoor photography that would attract clients and support my photography business, with a portfolio, blog and print shop.
It was a passion project. But it was also a chance to develop my design and development skills, and to learn Figma.
My contribution
I wrote, designed and built it myself.
- Learning to code: at Argos, I was mentored by a senior developer (and mentored them in return), and learned the basics of HTML and CSS.
- Learning to design: I started with wireframes in Balsamiq, then moved on to designing websites in Figma.
- Building it: I built a WordPress template and front end, so I could add galleries and blog posts from anywhere using consistent templates.
The outcome
The site reached around 1,000 people a month through organic search, and brought in a small number of repeat clients.
It also made me a better collaborator. Understanding HTML, CSS, JavaScript and WordPress helps me work closely with developers, and writing for my own site was great practice for UX writing. My photography now lives in the gallery on this site.