Building Portfolio V3
Rebuilding my personal website as a quieter, more useful record of what I make and learn.
- nextjs
- design
- architecture
Portfolio V3 started with a small frustration: my old portfolio showed projects, but it did not really show how I think. It felt like a collection of finished screenshots instead of a living record of the decisions, mistakes, and lessons behind the work.
Starting with the structure
Before touching the visual design, I wrote down what the site needed to answer:
- Who am I right now?
- What am I building?
- What have I learned from shipping real work?
- Where can someone explore the details?
That led to a simple shell: a persistent sidebar, a narrow homepage, and dedicated pages for deeper material. The homepage stays scannable while projects, notes, and experiments can grow independently.
Keeping content separate
The most useful architectural decision was treating content as data. Notes live in MDX files, but pages do not read those files directly. They call a small library instead:
const notes = await getPublishedNotes()
Today that library reads from Git. Later it could read from Neon or a CMS without forcing every page component to change.
A good boundary is valuable even when the first implementation behind it is simple.
Designing the visual rhythm
I wanted the interface to feel closer to a personal technical notebook than a product landing page. That meant relying on typography, narrow text measures, muted metadata, and hairline separators instead of decorative cards.
The result is intentionally restrained:
| Element | Role |
|---|---|
| Inter | Reading and interface text |
| Geist Mono | Dates, labels, and technical metadata |
| Thin borders | Separation without heavy surfaces |
| Green accent | Small status and active indicators only |
There is still plenty to improve. The important part is that the foundation now supports change without making every new page a redesign.
What comes next
- Responsive application shell
- Light and dark themes
- Git-based Notes publishing
- Real project case studies
- A better archive for experiments
Portfolio V3 is not meant to be finished once. It is meant to stay useful while I keep building.