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Home page portfolio : valentin-jourdheuil.com
Project : Sustainable portfolio
Portfolio : Study project
Portfolio : Startup project
Portfolio : Landing page
Introduction and Problem Statement
This project aims to showcase a collection of my projects while being designed with a sustainable approach. This portfolio serves as a testament to my commitment to incorporating sustainable design principles into my work.
One of the key challenges addressed in this project is the need to balance aesthetics, functionality, and sustainability. This involves finding innovative ways to minimize the environmental footprint of each project, considering materials, energy consumption, waste management, and overall lifecycle impact. The goal is to create a portfolio that not only demonstrates creative and impactful projects but also showcases the potential of sustainable design to address pressing global challenges.
Through this sustainable portfolio, I hope to inspire a shift towards more conscious and responsible design practices, fostering a sustainable future for both the design industry and the world at large.
Design Decision
In designing this sustainable portfolio, I made several key decisions to prioritize sustainability and optimize the user experience:
- Less Features, Only What's Really Important: To minimize the environmental impact of the website, I focused on including only essential features and functionalities. By reducing unnecessary elements, the portfolio achieves a simpler and cleaner design, allowing users to focus on the content and reducing the amount of energy and resources required for its operation.
- Few Images and Compress Using Dithering: Inspired by the website solar.lowtechmagazine.com, I chose to limit the number of images used in the portfolio. Images can significantly increase the carbon footprint of a website due to their file size and the energy required for their loading and rendering. To further minimize the impact, I utilized a dithering technique to compress the images, reducing their file size without compromising visual quality.
- Case Study in Notion: To streamline my project management and knowledge management processes, I decided to create a case study for each project directly in Notion. Notion is already where I manage my projects and handle my own knowledge management. By integrating the case studies within Notion, I can consolidate information and reduce the need for additional web pages, promoting a more efficient and sustainable portfolio.
By implementing these design decisions, the sustainable portfolio maximizes its environmental sustainability while still effectively showcasing the projects and their impact.
Technical Decision
Technical Decision
The main technical decision for this sustainable portfolio project is to export the code from Webflow, where the project was originally created, and host it on a green hosting provider.
In terms of hosting, the portfolio will be hosted on Infomaniak, a hosting provider located in Switzerland. Infomaniak is known for compensating its carbon impact by 200%, making it a sustainable choice (learn more here). Hosting the portfolio on a green hosting provider ensures that the environmental impact of the website's operation is minimized.
By combining the use of Webflow for design and functionality and hosting the portfolio on a green hosting provider like Infomaniak, the project achieves both aesthetic and environmental sustainability goals.
Key Metrics and Tools
To ensure that our sustainable portfolio has a positive impact, we track several metrics:
- Number of Elements: We aim to minimize the number of elements on our website to reduce its overall resource consumption. By keeping the number of elements low, we can reduce the energy required for loading and rendering the website.
- Number of Requests: We strive to minimize the number of requests made by our website. Each request requires data to be transferred, consuming energy and potentially contributing to increased carbon emissions. By reducing the number of requests, we can minimize our environmental footprint.
- Overall Size: We focus on optimizing the overall size of our website. By minimizing the size of files, including images, CSS, and JavaScript, we can reduce the amount of data that needs to be transferred and stored. This optimization helps decrease energy consumption and improve website performance.