I've made lots of portfolio sites in the past and I've always felt that something was off about them - an artist's worst nightmare. I could never publish a site that I didn't truly like.
For a long time, I just didn't have my own site because nothing I ever made was good enough for my own standards. My past drafts have always felt kind of generic or over-the-top or disingenuous. I sort of put off making a portfolio site for quite a while and I didn't really have a plan of when I'd try again.
One day after a conversation with a friend of mine I asked her what it meant to be an artist. She didn't know. When I asked the question I didn't know either but in the spur of the moment, I said an artist is first and foremost a storyteller. I thought to myself then:
"Which stories do I want to share?"
What is my story?
What do I want to world to know about me?
What was it about me that was unique?"
I think that's how every great portfolio starts.
The goal of this portfolio was not to get clients or to get a job or anything like that. The goal simply was just to tell a story. The story of a guy that was terrified of the status quo; that took conventional wisdom and spat it in its face; that would rather make mistakes than make nothing at all. A guy that thought the word 'average' meant even less than 'nothing'.
I wasn't always like this. In much of my schooling years I was a good soldier. I was obedient, conscientious, someone my that my teachers could praise in parent teacher interviews. But as time went on things changed, I could no longer just get good grades because I was just naturally smarter than people in my class and was during that time when my true colours showed. Gone was the good soldier who played by the rules. I was always ambitious and I realised if I wanted to get ahead, I'd have to do what few are willing to do. I'd have to play my own game to get to what matters to me rather than play someone else's game and get meaningless credentials or praise.
Instead of going to every lecture and selling my soul for a 4.0, I decided to focus more on uncommon knowledge. Everybody in that lecture is getting taught the same shit they're going to have the same beliefs, same knowledge, same attitude. I can't live that way. So I started to read, I started to build, I started to think. The more I read the more I learnt about the world... The world we live in is a fucking tragedy. If I hadn't decided to go this road I'd be ignorant of so many things. Sometimes the stuff I read keeps me up at night. But Pandora's box has been open there's no going back now.
The source of uncommon knowledge comes from books and unique experiences. Since books are far more thematically tangible, I thought I'd make my website reflect my love for books. The layout, the chapter numbers, the contents table are all standard elements in any book. There's nothing really super flashy on this site, no insane interactions, no insane contrast, no crazy layouts. It's simple, it's honest, it's efficient, it's functional with just the right amount of flair.
I've included a blog and a page for book reviews in addition to the standard portfolio pages because it's an critical medium that displays what I think is my greatest strength - The ability to thinking deeply and break things down to its most basic building blocks. I'm not a super technical guy but I am extremely observant to how my surroundings function.
To be radical is to grasp things by the root - Karl Marx
Also my yearbook quote... hmmm... a bit of weirdo a school you might think... And you'd be right. (No I'm not a communist)
The site's not perfect but it's something I can be proud of - and for now, that's good enough.
People what an authority to tell them how to value things but they choose this authority not based on facts or results. They choose it because it seems authoritative and familiar. And I am not and never have been... "familiar". - Michael Burry, The Big Short
