My website has gone through heavy changes over the past two years; Switching frameworks and redesigns many times, I have finally come across something that I am proud of.

React

The first website was made in React mainly because of the amount of community-made things that I could put on my website. I later realised that it was not the right framework for me as it was too complicated for what I needed (a portfolio website)

The website worked but felt clunky to use and was not easily responsive on smaller screens, making me virtually create a different website for mobile.

‘Charlie Fox Design’ WebV1

NextJS

I then jumped into NextJS made by Vercel (Who is my website host). NextJS promised instant page loading and performance, which it did. I altered the website design slightly to improve over the last.

With the mix of NextJS and the reduction of icons, the website performed well. It was still heavy though and was not meant for portfolio websites

‘CHARLIE DESIGN’ WebV2

Sveltekit

Sveltekit is an extremely lightweight, fast and easy-to-use framework that ‘just works’. I have found it very intuitive to use and is what the current website is built on

When I first transitioned to Svelte, I altered the design of the website again to make it feel less intrusive (no capitalization), fixing all of the responsive problems and making it easier to use.

Turning point

The home page looked great, but it wasnt really scalable and i couldnt carry design language accross to pages like ‘work’. It was at that moment that I decided to completely overhaul the website give it a fresh new look and move on from the original design that had blinded me.

I came up with a Netflix-style layout, which features thumbnails for every post which makes it feel way more interactive

Charlie Design ‘V3’

V3 is a more refined version of the previous design, feeling more finished and complete. It completes this look by using more dark and nuetral colours that are kinder on the eye. There is limited codebase change from ‘V2’ as it is mostly styling chnages and reduction of text