Portfolio Website

Overview

Designed preritayadav.com, a portfolio that rejects template conventions in favor of an interactive canvas experience. The site uses hand-drawn shapes, wobbly borders, and a sketch-like visual language to turn the portfolio itself into a piece of design work.

The Challenge

Designer portfolios tend to look the same: clean grids, sans-serif type, predictable layouts. The challenge was creating something that felt genuinely personal and memorable while remaining functional, accessible, and professional. The site needed to be a portfolio and a demonstration of design thinking simultaneously.

Process

1. Concept Exploration
2. Visual Language Definition
3. Component Design
4. Interaction Design
5. Prototyping
6. Iteration

Approach

I explored the idea of a hand-drawn canvas as the primary interaction model, treating the portfolio like a living sketchbook rather than a collection of pages. I designed custom canvas components (project cards, annotations, buttons), shaped the wobbly visual language, and designed a browse-only interaction mode that lets visitors navigate without editing tools.

Key Contributions

• Conceived the hand-drawn canvas concept as a portfolio medium
• Designed custom canvas components for project cards, annotations, buttons, and image frames
• Created the wobbly, sketch-like visual language, where every shape is drawn a little differently
• Designed a canvas layout for every page, built around a single readable column
• Designed a browse-only interaction mode with custom cursors and hover states
• Paired the visual canvas with accessible navigation for screen readers

Outcome

A one-of-a-kind portfolio experience that doubles as a demonstration of design craft. The hand-drawn aesthetic creates a memorable first impression, the canvas-based navigation invites exploration, and the content stays readable and accessible to everyone.