The Brief
I was given a brief in school (BOA Stage & Screen Production Academy) to create our own website. Now, this didn't entitle just creating a library for our school projects: it mean creating the gateway to our professional digital presence.
I always found the idea of having your own website and domain a really interesting thing, especially when you can get your own custom email! I've had this little obsession of bookmarking any design and webdev tips when on my social media, to at least make my scrolls more productive.
Now, most people would be familiar of Wix. It's a big website maker, and most people in my class were making it. With little knowledge of domains and more customisable options, I set up a simple Wix site, with their simple CMS feature for my portfolio. I had a broad idea of making the site look wacky, but that idea hadn't fully hatched yet. This was my (then) latest iteration of my website for school.
Finding Framer
Now, after my usual X (formerly Twitter) scroll, I came across another up-and-coming option in the website creation world: Framer.
Compared to the other websites that you would see in sponsor reels like Squarespace and lesser-known Webflow, Framer posed as the perfect middle ground between ease of use and deep customisation. I didn't need to use a basic CMS which prevented me from adding my quirk to it. No, I could customise them to any degree and format it.
Now, I just had to port my projects into the website. For these, I wanted to keep them somewhat similar in format, given I wouldn't want my learning journals to be too inconsistent. In fact, all of them follow almost the exact same format than this page. You're probably wondering why? It's because this page is also a learning journal!
The general format showed the topic, the date, and dedicated media for the learning journal. For example, for my multicam show learning journal, I placed the full show from YouTube at the top.
There was only really one learning journal that wouldn't look the same as the others; and this was my B1 development.
I felt it made for a good use of space, and prevented the need for dodging in and out of different webpages to see the same learning journals. They're all ordered in chronological order. On later learning journals, I even made custom slideshow covers with the new branding that I had created for one of the journals!
Finding Krystal
Now, it's one thing to make a great website, but it is a different matter to get the domain that gets your website on Google Search and to hide the fact you used Framer at all. I had already had "erolm.com" on IONOS, a well-known domain registrar with the German lady in those TV adverts.
With little financial resources, I settled for using that URL to redirect to the default URL that Framer gives you on the free tier. Not exactly the most professional thing, but sufficient for the meanwhile. That was, until a mindset switch that led me to look for something… a bit better. It's when I came across Krystal.
Web hosting providers suffer from the large amount of corporal oversight they have. This can lead to crazy unforeseen hikes in prices for customers, and unknown web servers in unknown places. What I loved about Krystal is that, while about double the price of web hosting from IONOS, I liked their interface, and it made the web hosting experience a bit more enjoyable. It even gave me unlimited custom emails with unlimited storage!
Using Canva
i've used Canva for almost five years, and I know can reliably create great graphics in a short amount of time. To keep branding consistent, I created cover images for each of my B1 pieces of work.
i've used Canva for almost five years, and I know can reliably create great graphics in a short amount of time. To keep branding consistent, I created cover images for each of my B1 pieces of work.