Today I made the last few tweaks to the brand new design of my professional web site. Everything is built on the WordPress platform and Atahualpa, with a heavy amount of HTML/CSS customization and graphic design from my own labor. I’ve learned a lot about graphic and web design over the past year, and I applied that knowledge in all corners of this new design.
My very first website was an auto-generated thing made with a utility in my web hosting service. It was functional, but very basic and left no room for customization. As I learned more about WordPress from creating the Therefore Productions blog, ThereforeYou.com, I realized I could use it to build a site that was more my style. A year and a half ago I redesigned andrewhymas.com, and I was very happy with it. WordPress uses pre-made themes for the graphic design of a site, and there a thousands of themes to choose from. I found one I liked and left it at that.
A few months later, I came to know the Atahualpa theme for WordPress. It allows users to create highly customized themes using a sophisticated settings panel and CSS customization. I saw a lot of potential in it, but I had to teach myself the basics of HTML and CSS to use it properly. I first tried out Atahualpa in the redesign of ThereforeYou, and I was thrilled with the results. I was no longer restricted to the themes I found. I could create websites almost exactly as I wanted them to look with incredible functionality. At the same time, I was learning more about using Photoshop and Illustrator for graphic design.
A week ago I looked at my professional site, and I realized I could do way more now than I could a year and a half ago. Now, with the latest design finished, and I’m very pleased with the results. I wanted a more modern, clean look to the site, and a lot of that comes from my new-found love of Paul Rand design. I’m sure that I’ll keep tweaking things as I go, but I’m devoting more time to my blog, Androsko.com, for most of my creative projects. AndrewHymas.com will serve as a way to introduce myself to people, prospective clients, and employers; a clean, neat, organized description of my career and goals.
