This Portfolio
The site you're on: six plain pages with no framework, a drawing of me that draws itself, and one markdown file that decides how all of it looks.
- Type
- Website
- Built with
- HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Canvas, MDX
- For
- Myself
The problem
Most portfolio sites either look generic or overdo the complexity. I wanted something that felt editorial and considered, without being a performance of cleverness. The design should get out of the way and let the work speak.
The previous version ran on Next.js, with GSAP and a custom cursor. That's a lot of machinery for a handful of pages.
The approach
I started from a spec. One CLAUDE.md file describes the colours, the type, the layout, the motion and the voice, and it lists what not to do. Claude reads it before changing anything visual. When something comes out wrong, the file gets corrected too.
The direction is quiet and typographic: one neutral canvas, one typeface, black type and one signal orange. The only decoration is fine pen lines.
The drawing on the homepage isn't an image. A small tool traces a pen drawing into ordered strokes, and the browser draws them live with a moving nib when they scroll into view. In dark mode the ink is cut out of a light silhouette, so the drawing inverts like a drawing and not like a photo negative.
The rest is plain HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Projects live in one file and articles in a folder of MDX files, so I can add either without touching a template. The only build step compiles the articles.
The outcome
Adding an article is one file and one command. Adding a project is one entry in a list. The illustrations in my articles came out of this work too, and turned into a skill of their own: Article Drawings.
Results