Back in March I decided to start working on a web site for my freelance design work.  I wanted a legitimate place to show my online portfolio and to refer clients to.  I dreaded being that web designer without a web site.  After spending a month or so deciding on a name, I landed on BIG LUX Design.

What's The Name All About?

I don't have some fancy explanation for such an abstract name and how it's meaning powers my business model, but it was inspired by some things.  Here's what Wikipedia has to say about Lux: 

The lux (symbol: lx) is the SI unit of illuminance and luminous emittance. It is used in photometry as a measure of the intensity, as perceived by the human eye, of light that hits or passes through a surface. It is analogous to the radiometric unit watts per square metre, but with the power at each wavelength weighted according to the luminosity function, a standardized model of human visual brightness perception. In English, "lux" is used in both singular and plural.

It's pretty confusing, but the part I pulled from it was " measure of the intensity, as perceived by the human eye, of light that hits or passes through a surface".  So, it's all about how we perceive things, and how BIG LUX Design can help how people perceive your company.  I thought that was kind of cool.  So, I decided to go with it, and created a logo that's just a splash of light.  No one will know that because it honestly looks more like a sun flower or something.  But hey, it's not like I threw a square gradient up there.  

Under The Hood

There's a lot going on under the hood.  I chose ExpressionEngine as a content management system.  I've used it many times for other web sites and I think it's one of the greatest CMS's out there right now.  I've also used PerchCMS, which is great for the really small sites.  I'd also like to try out MojoMotor soon, by the same makers of ExpressionEngine.

On the Blog, there's the social links.  Those were really fun to implement.  And thanks to Twitter and Facebook providing easy-to-implement buttons, it made it a breeze.

I chose to use sIFR for the fonts.  I'd like to eventually be using @font-face when all browsers are ready, which seems to be very soon.  I've always just used the default browser fonts, and I really wanted something that looked a little different for once.  I love the way a different font looks on the web, you just don't see it very often...yet.

The "Work" page required quite a bit of jQuery.  Some of it uses plugins, and some is custom code.  The filtering plug-in is something I really liked.  I found it after hours of searching for a decent filtering plugin.  This one had exactly what I was looking for.  Check it out for your own projects.

Look & Feel

I'm a big fan of textures in Web Design.  In fact, if I have a weakness, it's not using textures in my designs.  I like the depth and real-life feel it gives a design.  I mean, I love a good minimalistic site, but I really love some of the great textured sites out there.  Designs like the one's in this post really inspire me.  Most of the textures I used were from http://tileabl.es/.  Those are just great texture packs.  They're all seamless too.  Love 'em.

To Conclude...

The most challenging part of designing my site was to just stop designing new ideas, and go with something.  I kid you not, half way into designing this site, I almost started over.  I am so glad I didn't, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't looking forward to updating it someday.  Also, please let me know if you find anything that seems to be broken or buggy.

There you have it.  Thanks for checking out my new site!