Article
Finally Updated My Portfolio Design
Notes on redesigning my portfolio after almost two years, the inspiration behind the new layout, and the surprising build-time gain from switching a few libraries.
Overview
It had been almost two years since I last touched the design of my portfolio. I kept updating content but left the look alone, until I got tired of it and decided to redesign. The stack stayed the same: SvelteKit and TailwindCSS.
The old design looked a lot like a documentation site. A few people told me browsing it felt like reading technical docs, which was intentional at the time, but I’d grown out of that idea by the time I sat down to redesign it.
Finding inspiration
I went looking for direction on WallofPortfolios, which collects a wide range of portfolio designs. There’s a lot to sift through, but two stuck with me: Ayaneshu’s and Parth Vardhani’s.
What drew me to both was how their layouts reminded me of the Arc Browser, which I used for a while. That’s what pushed me toward a browser-like layout for my own site, sidebar navigation and a loading indicator for page transitions included.
Building the new design
I’m primarily a frontend developer who dips into fullstack work occasionally, so the redesign itself wasn’t too rough. I started with the overall layout, then the sidebar, then the content sections, in that order, which kept the scope manageable.
Alongside SvelteKit and TailwindCSS, the library choices shifted a bit between versions:
Previous website
Current website
What I gained
The most surprising outcome was the build time. The old site, with roughly the same content, took 3 to 5 minutes to build. With the current setup (same content, different libraries), that dropped to 20 to 30 seconds.
I genuinely didn’t expect that. The codebase and content were nearly identical; the only real differences were the libraries and layout. That’s a big performance gap to get almost for free.
Conclusion
Redesigning my portfolio turned out to be worth the time, both visually and for the build performance I didn’t see coming. If you’re a developer sitting on an old portfolio design, it’s a reasonable weekend project, and you might learn something about your own toolchain along the way.