Steven Held Graphic Design Portfolio

Designing StevenHeld.com

I know my way around Adobe Flash pretty well and could've easily created an interactive website using flash content, but the industry is changing. With HTML5 on the horizon and after remarks by Apple, with the company's lack of support for flash in their devices, such as the iPad and iPhone, it indicates that flash may no longer be a major player. Therefore, I wanted to challenge myself to create a website without any Flash content and to strictly use HTML and CSS.

I reached my goal of creating an interactive website without the use of any Flash content. However, my site isn't purely HTML and CSS content, since I did use some javascript to gain a little more interactivity throughout the site.

At the time I was designing this site, I knew little about HTML and CSS. I had to sit down and teach myself through many a trial and error. Armed with just a pad of paper and a pencil, I was determined to come up with a graphic design portfolio website like no other designer out there. By no means do I declare this site to be perfect. I learn more everyday and will continue to look for ways to improve it as I go.

Besides learning all the new coding languages, the hardest part of designing this website was actually developing a strong concept to represent myself as a graphic designer. A solid concept is hard to come up with, especially a concept to represent myself.

Website Concept

Design is evident in our natural environment. My greatest inspiration often comes from the wonderful natural designs I observe everyday. Nature has always been an inspiration. From the starry nights above, to the very chair you are sitting in - I believe everything has a plan, a purpose, and a design.

The design of this page is loosely based upon a tree ring. Tree rings reveal much about the subsequent life and growth of a tree. Each successive year a new ring forms within a tree. The outside environment (such as how wet that year was) affects the width of each individual ring.

The tree rings on my homepage have been narrowed down to represent three key qualities of a designer. Each ring is colored by the CMYK color-scheme (Cyan Magenta Yellow Black). The CMYK color-scheme is a common print color scheme that graphic designers know very well. The three rings each represent a vital element required to produce a solid, well-thought-out work of design. These three things are my inner core, structure, and fruit.

The questions: why, how, and what are also represented by the three rings.

Why, how, and what are key questions I always ask myself when working on a design.

• Why am I designing this?
• How can I make this design better?
• What does the client want?
  
  

Core- My innate sense of design nourished by a firm foundation from my family, friends, and graphic design training used to nourish and build my structure.

Structure- Strong, sturdy graphic design ideas that are backed by research used to produce my fruit.

Fruit- Completed graphic design work. From a strong foundation, nourishing core, and strong structure I am able to produce much fruit.

Thanks for visiting!

Please check out my Graphic Design Portfolio.