Project Case Study: Eric Nunlee
For the past couple of months I have been working with a fantastic graphic designer based in New York, Eric Nunlee. He came to me with a brilliant design that he wanted to be integrated with Wordpress and I took on the challenge, it was by far one of the biggest projects I had taken on so it was exciting.
The blog would incorporate my three specialties and favourite areas to work in, which is Wordpress, jQuery and portfolio design/presentation.
The main motive of the site was to build a brand around the freelancer, this would be achieved by displaying his work (portfolio/projects etc.) along with his personal blog and social endevours (twitter/facebook etc.). It meant that he could express himself throughout the site whilst keeping it available for potential clients to check out his work.
I used jQuery to really give the site an extra push, to enable good use of screen real estate and to really make the experience much nicer for the user. Visitors are able to scroll through his latest works in the sidebar for instance or they are able to send him a link of interest without leaving the page or they can share a post by simply clicking a share button which displays a nice little in-design window, its all very nice but to really do it justice you need to check it out: http://ericnunlee.com
The site has 3 main areas; the blog, the portfolio and the working on sections as well as the usual (About, Contact pages etc.)
The Blog
The blog forms the main part of the homepage, it allows Eric to show his personal side, clients like to have a friendly relationship with their contractors and this really allows the clients to see what Eric is like as a person. The blog on portfolio’s is also very common now as a way of drawing visitors in and for SEO purposes, it will allow him to build up a visitor base who may at some point need a website so in the long run could equate to contracts.
A few features I have added to the blog include the options to share the post via social bookmarking sites, email the post to a friend, customized comments in keeping with the style of the blog and the option to easily add posts to the appropriate area on the sidebar as to intice the visitor to keep navigating through the site.
There was also a page named Writings (the above screenshot) which would allow the user to navigate through the archives easily with each post displayed under its month and the months set up in an accordion style, the user could then choose a month and it would scroll down to show the posts under that month.
The Portfolio and Working On Sections
The Portfolio and Working On sections are where the prospective clients are going to be focusing their attention on so it needed to be simple and really demonstrate his work in the best possible way. To do this we added a simple layout whereby we had the works categorized by Print, Web and Identity and the selected pieces under each heading, the user could then choose the piece of work and it would display on the right. Each work could have a number of screenshots which could be scrolled through with the use of buttons directly below it. I used a plugin in the backend of Wordpress in order to try and streamline the process of adding information and images easily so as to help Eric make the most out of the Wordpress system.
Conclusion
Just a final note, this kind of site (portfolio as part of a blog) is something that I am seeing a lot nowadays, freelancers don’t want to come across as businesses, we want to come across as people and the more you can show that you are individual and part of the design community through things like Twitter and other social platforms, the more you are representing yourself as an expert in the field. At the end of the day, although there needs to be a level of professionalism when dealing with businesses, you’ll be working with one person. I cant tell you the number of times I have had a professional client (business) coming to me and then I start dealing with one person over IM or the phone and it becomes informal and friendly, that’s the way that I work and what seems to be the way most freelancers work nowadays, we can leave the suits at the design agencies to come across as the professional businesses.
And finally, I really enjoyed working on this project, it strengthened my skills in Wordpress further and allowed me to work with a great designer who I got on very well with, so the project was hassle free. I am and the client is very happy with the outcome so the project was hailed a success.