drewhemnes.com

Project Description

For our Interaction Design Portfolio class, we were asked to create a personal portfolio website that highlights design projects, while focusing on helping us create a strong and consistent identity. For this project I decided to switch my design portfolio from Square Space to Cargo Collective because of Cargo's seamless format and endless customization capabilities. This class allowed me identify my brand, how to tell my story through an interactive experience, design for hiring professionals, polish my resume, highlight my skills, and focus in on what work best describes who I am as a designer. For this project I had the pleasure of mentoring by Hulu's Production Design Manager, Megan de Castro. Her industry expertise as a Senior Art Director and Associate Creative Director at Deloitte Digital and BA in Graphic Design at The Art Institute of Seattle provided her with the perfect scope on how I, as a Brand Strategist, would succeed in this class. Megan saw my unique background in Fashion, Visual Design, and Branding as my most compelling attributes in my design history. Just a few months after discovering my design practice and polishing my design portfolio website, I was hired as Creative Director of a start-up clothing brand Troubled Humans. I must say, this was because of success in this class.

Problem

Problems tackled for this project included; design aesthetics, discovering my personal brand, user experience design, design for hiring professionals, storytelling, resume improvement, and web design.

Insights

Some insights that I collected throughout this project was that I am a Brand Strategist at heart. Second, I learned that hiring professionals are likely to scan your work in a very short period of time - which makes it very important to design my website for just that. Third, my mentor Megan de Castro, Hulu's Production Design Manager helped me identify what other industry professionals to compete with within the Luxury and Fashion space. Lastly, this class helped me design my online presence to e ready for hiring.

Solutions

Switching over my Design Portfolio from Square Space to Cargo Collective helped me create a visually compelling website experience while maintaining the luxury feel that I wanted to create. Discovering my personal brand expertise was solved with the help from my mentor and identifying my passion for branding in the luxury space. Competing with other industry professionals offering Brand Strategy was done by creating a compelling personal design portfolio site, polishing my resume for hiring experts, and creating a persuasive LinkedIn profile. Defining my unique design practice was accomplished by telling my story in a single paragraph and highlighting my expertise within my case studies. Polishing my resume was done by understanding how resumes are scanned by employers at scale. Creating a successful design portfolio was done by focusing on user experience, storytelling, and visual aesthetics.