Visualgui 2014 Focuses on Work

My goal is to make some changes to Visualgui every year. Despite my crazy schedule, Visualgui for 2014 comes a bit earlier this year since I have a bit of time on my hand while staying in the hospital with my mom. Whenever she fell asleep, I worked on it to pass time.

The focus for this year is the work section. I want to combine everything into one page. My colleauges and professors say that I have way too much crap in my porfolio. Potential employers don’t have time to look at everything. They just want to see my best work. While I completely understand thier perspective, I have no intention of making this site for employers. The work section is not a portfolio. It’s an archive of all my works. Now with just one click, you can see everything in an hierachy. The top hero showcases the most recent projects. The featured section displays the sites I want to highlight. If you want to see more, the three-column are list of works that still exist on the Internet. It could be overwhelming, but I do want to have everything.

In previous designs, I restricted myself to the screenshot of the works. Every time I want to do a redesign, I have to keep the width the same so that I don’t have to recrop each and every screenshots every time. The new work section is do away with all that. Now if I want to do a redesign, I only have to deal with three images.

The new logo is also a huge departure. I am going for a very minimal initial of the V simply because I am getting tired of seeing the word Visualgui. Another reason is that I now have a better understand of branding after taking the two graduate courses this semester on brand and identity. They both were very valueble courses even though they took up so much of my time.

As for typography, I chose Roboto sans for body copy and Roboto Slab for headers. Since they both come from the same designer, big up to Christian Robertson, they complement each other well. In addition, both typefaces support Vietnamese characters.

The new layout isn’t drastically different. I still like the one-column blog for readability. I also do away with comment entirely. I no longer have to include the comment functionality as well as the CSS styling for them. I do thank and appreciate all 17, 047 comments left on this blog. Even though they are no longer available to the public, I still have them for my own muse.

If you still reading and visiting this blog, I hope you enjoy the renovation. I also gave the Strength page a new look. My mom and I need some strength right now.