Radu's Personal Portofolio

Technical skills

Iterative Design

Goal: You explore and use professional design tools and you iteratively design visual works.

Mood Board

Introduction: I made a Mood Board for the Branding project where Owen Bryce is our client.

What did I do: I made the first version of Mood Board(see fig.1) based on Owen’s presentation where I tried to get his mood, favourite colors and feelings so I can put it all together in a mood board. After I showed him he said I chose too many colorfull pictures and should have used more grounded colors. So I made the second version of mood board(see fig.2) where I decided to use just one colorfull purple picture and to put it in the center and rest of them are grounded and natural colors. After Owen checked one more time he said that purple doesn’t really fit well there and that I should find a great green picture(you can see his comments also in fig.2 down part) So I started to iterate again and put a green image in the center and also changed some of other images(see fig.3) And finally he liked all the images and how I organized them but there was still a thing with color palette, he said I used too raw colors.(you can see his comments also in fig. 3 down part) By that time Kate worked on a color palette which Owen liked it so I took 5 colors from her but I still needed to find one more which I had to search for. After analysing all possible colors for the color palette me with Owen concluded that this is the final version of our Mood Board(see fig.4)

How did it go: The process itself was a bit confusing as I didn’t know what to expect from Owen especially in the beginning if he is going to like my work or not. That’s why I made so many iterations just to finalize the Mood Board but we are still happy with the work in the end.

What did I learn: I learned how important a mood board is for a project as it gives you an overview of the design of the whole project. It includes main and secondary colors and also the vibe our client has. The mood board was usefull also for interviews where we showed it to people and asked about their vibe and feelings. For example in the 1st semester we weren’t explained what is a mood board and why do we need to make it so I didn’t think how can it help me with my project. But now in 2nd semester I understood that a right mood board can help you a lot in succeeding with your project as it represents all colors and vibe of the future website so you together with your client can agree on minor things during early stage. Also I learned to communicate with the client as many times as possible to keep him informed about my work and getting constant feedback so I can complete many iterations on one thing.


Music app


Introduction: Wouter gave us an assignment to do whatever we want to improve our design skills. I chose to recreate my favourite music app from where I listen to music and got professional feedback from graph designer (Wouter) and recreated the app again. The reason I chose the mobile version because usually people listen to music from their phones as it’s more accessible.

What did I do: I wanted to recrate the app of Sound Cloud in the way I like. First of all I tried to combine the classical music style with pop music (see fig.1 and fig.2). You can see the font and colors I chose are more for classical music but the songs itself are pop style. Wouter said that it is very good that I try to experiment and create my own style but in this situation it is better to follow one style and I chose to do it for pop music. Based on my research I chose the main color to be different shades of violet with blue and I made a gradient out of it because this color gives the vibe of pop music. I searched online for “pop music vibes” and noticed that the most abundant color which caught my eyes attention immediately was different shades of purple. (check fig.5 for some examples I saw) Also I asked Chat GBT for confirmation (check fig.6) and after that I searched some albums of Billie eilish, The weekend and Lana del Ray to check if information from ChatGbt is indeed true so they also use different shades of purple (check fig.8, fig.9 and fig.10) which is going to give a pop music vibe. Besides that, Wouter showed me the difference between a professional app music and mine how all small details make such a huge difference. So he suggested me to look for tiny details and implement them as margins of playlists and having one playlist showed on half on the right side so the user understands that he needs to scroll horizontally to see more playlists available. So that what I did I looked for a lot of small details in actual Sound Cloud app (check fig.7) and recreated them also the music bar which shows the current song playing on the first page which I omitted in the first prototype.

How did it go: I would say that it really went pretty well as Wouter gave me a really helpful feedback which improved my prototype a lot . You can also see how different both versions which I implemented look from each other even though they have more or less same structure.

What did I learn: I learned to recognize small details in an app and how much of an influence they have on an app or website. By focusing on tiny details you can make a non-professional app into professional one the same I did even though my final version is still not the best but still you can see the difference.


Portfolio


Introduction: I made some small iterations on my portfolio based on teacher’s feedback.

What did I do: Firstly, I changed the navigation of my portfolio after Jo-An feedback (check fig.1) In the beginning I had 3 buttons in the header: Home, Technical skills and professional skills. After that I made one button “Learning Outcomes” with a dropdown menu by hovering with Technical and Professional skillks buttons, which was still confusing for teachers because as Jo-An explained me that I shouldn’t divide the LO into technical and professional. After that I spend some time thinking about it and came up with the navigation which is now so by hovering on Learning Outcomes button a dropdown menu with each LO and by clicking on each one you will automatically will be redirected to the corresponding LO. Other thing is that the first color palette I chose for portfolio wasn’t the best one because of readability. Then I searched online for best 2 colors combination which will not make your eyes tired and will make the text appear more readable I and found the current color palette I’m using now. (check fig.2 for the found template and also you can access this link to see the website: Click here.) Another thing I improved is that I changed the location of every link from my portfolio so by clicking on it – doesn’t open in the same tab as portfolio but creates and opens in a new tab which is a good UI/UX trick so the user doesn’t lose my portfolio tab. I did this by simply adding the target attribute: target = _blank. I came to this decision after performing a user test on Jo-An and she adviced me to do so (check fig.3).

What did I learn: I learned how important is the feedback from professionals (in my case teachers) in order to make iterations and in the end to improve your work.


Picoo Project (User testing)


Introduction: For picoo project I made 2 iterations: first one is about debriefing based on Jo-An feedback and second one is based on user testing.

What did I do: Before performing the user test I implemented the log in pop up on the home page so by clicking on “Create” button the log in appears (check fig.1 to see the home page with “Create” button) meaning the user can’t create a quiz without being logged in. But I also had one more option in my mind to have the log in feature after the user completes his quiz and wants to save it, meaning user can create a quiz without being logged in. During the user test I explained and showed him both options and he said to better have the log in feature in the end after creating the quiz, because if it would be in the beginning he might give up on creating a quiz as it is sometimes annoying when you have to log in on the website you visit for the first time. After this feedback I decided to change the log in pop up in the end after the user created the quiz and wants to save it then the pop up will appear (check fig.2 to see how it looks like).

What did I learn: I learned how to make proper user testing in order to improve your website by making iterations, so based on feedback you change something and make it better.


Picoo Project (Debriefing)


Introduction: I was able to make an iteration on debriefing document of Picoo project based on Jo-An's feedback.

What did I do: In the beginning of UI/UX picoo project we as a group were advised to write a debriefing for picoo company to set the goals clearly for everyone. We decided so everyone writes 1-2 sentences about how they understood the problem and what the solution we can come up with (check fig.1 to see the initial debriefing). But before sending it directly to picoo I decided to show it to Jo-An (UI/UX professional) and get feedback from her (check fig.2 to see her feedback). Her feedback to us was to improve our debriefing by doing it in a more formal way but not as we did it. For this she provided us a source from where we can see examples of good debriefing, how to write a good debriefing and some good templates. Taking all of this into consideration I made some changes to the debriefing document (check fig.3 and fig.4) and made it more formal following a template: added a header indicating group number, the date. After that I added a small introduction with a title “Project Understanding” and in the end I added the “Next steps” section including some follow up questions for picoo to answer.

What did I learn: I learned how to write a formal debriefing and interact with the client by including in the end also the follow up questions. And how important was the feedback from the teacher rather than sending the first version of the debriefing.


First typography poster


Introduction: I made a typography poster for design classes using Adobe Illustrator and got feedback from Wouter.

What did I do: Firstly I started with doing something weird and learning adobe tools (check fig.1) After I struggled with placement of each letter and making shadows I came up with this (check fig.2) After that I showed it to Wouter and he said that each shadow must have the same angle and then he explained with real life examples why should it be like that and how to do it (check fig.3 for feedback) then he showed me how to put a perspective point to where all shadows must go to (check fig.4 and see how each shadow goes to one exact point called perspective point) This small change made my poster look more professional rather than having all those shadows with random angles.

What did I learn: I learned what is a perspective point and when to use it in designs and also how important is to get feedback from teachers so I can improve my work afterwards.


Second typography poster


Introduction: I made one more typogtaphy poster during Wouter’s classes and improved it after teacher’s feedback.

What did I do: Firstly I started learning how to use the necessary tools in order to fake a 3D object in adobe illustrator (check fig.1) After that I started on a new page actually creating that cube out of words and made it with a black background (check fig.2) After that I went to Wouter for feedback and he said that it doesn’t look like a poster and I need to add small words or sentences near my cube like “Copyright from Radu Ghimp” and stuff. Also, he advised me to play with the colors and change the black background and make it in my own way (if needed check fig.3 for his feedback) Based on his feedback I changed my poster and now it looks way more professional and more like a typogropghy poster. You can see in fig.4 how I added a small heading at the bottom and wrote small sentences and at the top added copyright and the year 2025.

What did I learn: I learned to include in a typography poster small headings and sentences to make it look like an actual typography poster and choosing the right shades or gradient for your poster is also an important thing to spend time on. And also I learned how important is the feedback from teachers to improve your work.


Third typography poster


Introduction: Here is one more typography poster I did during Wouter’s classes.

What did I do: I made a small iteration while doing this poster, I added small words, sentences and headings in the background of my poster so it actually looks like a typography poster (check fig.1 and fig.2 to see the difference).

What did I learn: I put this poster in the portfolio to show that I learned more techniques in adobe, for example how to do this kind of 3D letters (check the images on the left).


Project X (Movie website)


Introduction: I made a movie website in react (for more details click here to go to Development LO where I explain everything in details) Also, I was able to make an iteration based on Maikel’s feedback.

What did I do: Firstly, I followed a tutorial on how to create a movie website in react and came up with this version (check fig.1). I showed it to Maikel and we discusssed what else I can change or add and he said to make it possible for the user to search for movies by genre not just by name in case the user doesn’t know the name and doesn’t know which movie to watch. (check fig.2 to see Maikel’s feedback) I did it by adding one more route in api.js file to go to “/genre/movie/list” the same thing I did to search the movie by name but in that case I used the path to get the popular movies: “/movie/popular” (If needed click here to see the full code in api.js file) So in the end, after I made it possible for the user to search by both name and genre of the movie my website looks like this (check fig.3). If you want to actually see how to search a movie by name or by genre click here to see the gif

What did I learn: Regarding technical part I learned how APIs work and from where to get it. Regarding professional part I learned how important is the feedback from teachers because there is always room for improvement and teachers can guide me and say what I have to change and improve.

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Development and Version control

Goal: You explore front-end development languages, you write code and document in a version control environment.


Portfolio


Introduction: Personal Experience Portfolio semester 2. Here is the link to the git lab where you can find also the ReadMe file: Click here.

What did I do: I implemented my portfolio for 2nd semester in HTML and CSS which shows my coding skills, not on a very high level I agree but still it shows that at least I know the basics. For example I used the grid in the home page to organize my personal photos in a rectangle with text inside. (see fig.1 and fig.2 both HTML and CSS) I used flex box for organizing the content and pictures the way I want for absolutely every proof in my portfolio, to see an example how it looks like check fig.3 and fig.4 for both HTML and CSS). Also, because of flex box and grid and I used max and min width and height instead of just width and height my website is responsive, not fully responsive because we still need to have some workshops with Maikel about this so in the end I will try to make it fully responsive.

How did it go: Till now it is good, I still have things to improve on and also start using JavaScript. We had 1 workshop about this and I already have a small overview in my mind but still I need to try it myself and practicce a lot.

What did I learn: As I mentioned already the flex box and grid, these are the things that helped me obtain a responsive website as for example in semester 1 we didn’t have to have a responsive portfolio so everything I know about responsiveness is from 2nd semester I learned myself. Also Maikel gave me some advices as to use max and min width and height, workshops about CSS also were helpful for me.


PHP Challenge and CSS


Introduction: PHP challenge and CSS practice

What did I do: I managed to do the PHP challenge from Maikel’s bootcamp after having an introduction to PHP in general. Honestly, before the bootcamp I didn’t even hear about PHP and had no idea what is this. Now I know how to send an automatic email (see fig.1) and know how string concatenation works in PHP after Maikel explained me. He adviced me a really helpful website about PHP where I checked how tags should be written with “$” sign and in which order, so in this way I can get whichever input from the user I want to my email, for example name, surname, arrival, departure and other inputs.

What did I learn: What I learned else is for example showing a congratulation message after the email was send.(fig.2) Also I can put 2 links for example by clicking on each one you will be redirected to index.html for example, (see fig.2) and an important thing is that the nav bar where I put the links stay the same, I don’t have to rewrite them in the new index.html which I suppose saves a lot of time in more complex projects. Also I remembered all types of forms for input I learned in 1st semester and now I had a chance to revise them and used all possible type of forms for this challenge. Now if I speak just about CSS I did few exercises on the website suggested by Maikel (see images on the left side) where I exercised the grid, flex box, position absoulute by using top and left properties.

How did it go: It went very good because I discovered something completely new for me as I said I had no idea about PHP before. And now I already have a good overview and know some basic things to do with PHP.


Picoo Project (responsiveness)


Introduction: For the development project I worked on Desktop version just by myself. Here is the link to the git lab where you can find also the ReadMe file: Click here

What did I do: Firstly, I created a fully responsive header following a YouTube tutorial, here is the link to the tutorial if you need: Click here. So to create a fully responsive header for both desktop (check fig.1) and mobile phones (check fig.2) I used media queries. I set it till 599px for phones (Click here if you want to see the code) and over 600px for tablets or desktop (Click here to see the code). Obviously that I used flex box in both cases: display: block for phones and display flex with space between for desktop. But in case of mobile version I needed to use some basic JavaScript to trigger the burger menu so by clicking on it vertical menu appears (Click here to see the code.). Also some elements like Quiz creator rectangle, the text under it and the “Create” button (check fig.3) are bigger on desktop and on phones I made them smaller in size (check fig.4) so they don’t take so much space on phone’s screen, I did it using media queries as I mentioned above. And the ‘Create Quiz” image which can be seen on desktop disappears on phones because there is no space for it and it becomes unnecessary. I saw the same thing on the real picoo website how images are not shown on phones but just on desktop (check fig.5 and fig.6) so that’s why I decided to do the same. One more thing about responsiveness is how I used grid for existing quizzes by writing just one line of code I made all those cards fully responsive on all devices (Click here to see the code.). For example, on desktop they will be placed in one line (check fig.7), on tablets they will be 4 cards in a row and 1 underneath (check fig.8), if the screen is a little smaller they will be placed 3 in a row and 2 underneath (check fig.9) and so on till the screen will be less than 600 px, then all cards will be placed in a row (check fig.10).

What did I learn: Everything I mentioned above I learned during this project as I had no idea about existing of media queries. About the grid in general I knew but exactly the min and max grid with auto fill was something new and really useful to know. I knew I can do the same thing with media queries by writing a code for each type of screen but with min and max grid with autofill is so much easier and shorter. First time I saw that kind of grid was in a tutorial on Youtube (Can't put the link as I don't remember which tutorial was that) and after one week Maikel shows the same grid layout in a bootcamp but I already knew it from the tutorial.


Picoo Project (Functionality)


Introduction: Here I’m going to write about the functionalities of “Create Quiz” page has and how I did it.

What did I do: I created a fully functional “Create Quiz” page where the user can easily create his own quiz. So first thing I struggled with was to save user’s input so when he comes back to questions he created he must see the information he wrote. To do this I created a renderfunction() which has another function inside saveCurrentEditor(); (Click here to see the code) and it takes the values from the input fields and after that updates the corresponding question object in questions[]: (Click here to see the code). This means as soon as you click another question the current text and checkboxes are stored in memory. Another functionality is that by clicking on “Add question” button another question appears in the left aside bar by adding a click eventListener to that button and after that a new question object is created in the memory and by inner.html the question appears in the left aside bar (Click here to see the code). Another functionality I added is by clicking on trash button(check the image and you will see in the quiz editor in the top right corner the trash button) the question is deleted from the center where is the editor and also from left aside bar. Here is the code how I did it: Click here. So this code determines which question to delete, then it deletes it from left aside bar, after that it removes the question from the data array, then it renumbers again the remaining questions in the left aside bar and auto-selects the previous question to be displayed in the center (in the editor). One more thing which user is able to do is to select how many answers he wants to have for each question but by default each question has 4 options because I set answerCount:4 in the beginning. But whenever the user chooses 2 or 3 options the answerCount will be updated and it keeps what was already entered so the user doesn’t have to type in again (Click here to check the code)

What did I learn: Everything mentioned above was something I learned during this project by the help of AI and tutorials and I find it really useful for the future. I mean all the advanced JavaScript but HTML and CSS I knew how to do just by myself. For some functionalities I had no idea how to implement like saving the data inside an array for example so whenever the user clicks somewhere else and then comes back to the question he typed in already so his input is shown on the screen, so in situation like this when I had no idea how to do it I asked chat gbt to help me do it and then I was trying to understand how and why it works. As I already explained above how each functionality works, and in case I didn’t understand something in the code I copy pasted the line of code and told AI to explain in details (check fig.2 and fig.3 as an example).


Challenge 1


Here is the first challenge! I made number 0 to count upwards every second infinite times unless you restart the page. Firstly, I made the count to start from 0 and inside that function I defined the Text constant by getting element by id. After that I set an interval so it counts upwards by 1 number every second.


Challenge 3


Introduction: Here is the link to git lab where you can also see a short ReadMe: Click here. Linking to git lab was optional but I decided to do so.

What did I do: I used just HTML and CSS to make a fully responsive page indicated in the challenge. Making it responsive was optional but I did it using media queries, flex box and grid. I put a max width of 767 px for phones and over 768 px for tablets and desktop. (Click here to see the code) I did so because Maikel advised us to use specifically this size of screen for media queries in one of the bootcamps. You can check fig.1 and fig.2 how my page looks both on phones and desktop. Another requirement for the challenge was to use correct semantic elements. For the header I used nav tag with ul tag inside and li tag with links inside and I used icons from “font awesome” website. I used section tag with h1, img, and p tags inside and in the end I made a footer. Click here to view the HTML file. For the pictures I chose a grid layout (Click here to see the code) so they are responsive on all screens. (check fig.3, fig.4 and fig.5) For testimonials I used flex box and grid (Click here to see the code) and check fig.6 to see how they look. And also I made a fixed header which was optional.


Challenge 4


Firstly in HTML I created a div with id=colorGrid which I will need in JavaScript. After that I created a grid layout with 16 columns in CSS. After that in JavaScript I added the array which was given in the challenge and then defined the container constant by id. Then, using a forEach function - iterates over the array and adds div elements to the grid with the background color from the arrayitem. You can check on the left side how it looks and the JavaScript code also.


Challenge 5


Introduction: I animated the shape I made in CSS battle (if needed you can check the second proof where I mentioned the shapes I made in CSS battle) Here is the link to Git Lab where you can also find a quick ReadMe: Click here.

What did I do: I animated the shape using transition and animation with keyframes which change from 0% to 100% to scale all shapes and to rotate by 10 degrees the top shape (Click here to see the CSS code). Also I added some basic JavaScript so by clicking on any shapes the color changes and the rest remains the same. (Click here to see the code) You can also check the images on the left side to see how shapes look like.


Project X


Introduction: For project X I chose to learn react by doing a website where the user can search for a movie to watch.

What did I do: I made a functional website in react to learn the basic things and have an overview what react is about. For this, I followed a tutorial on YouTube (Click here to see the tutorial on YouTube) where firstly I got instructions on how to install react and then started to understand why should I use react: it is easier to built a complex website because I’m able to divide the website not just into pages but also into components that make up a page and for each component I have a different files (if you need to see how I structured it Click here to go to gitlab) On my website the user is able to search for a movie by name or by genre if for example he is not sure which movie to watch he can search by genre. (check first video on the left side to see how it works) So I followed the tutorial to be able to search the movie by the name but then I added myself the feature to search also by the genre following the same principle. I also changed some styling myself from the tutorial and for example if a movie can’t be found or it doesn’t exist in the middle of the screen will appear a text: No movies found. One more interesting feature I made from the tutorial is being able to save the movie to Favorites by clicking on the red heart and then you can access “Favorites” page to see saved movies and also you are able to remove them from favourites. (check second video on the left side to see how it works).

What did I learn:I learned how react works, firstly I learned how to install react and how to create a react project. Then I understood how components work and how to put them together so they form a page: I created a app.jsx file to put all components together with the path so I can actually access that page in the browser (If needed Click here to see the app.jsx file). One more thing I learned is working with APIs, I used the website from the tutorial to get the movies for my website (Click here to see the website I used for APIs). I had to create an account there and follow all instructions from the tutorial to get the base url and API key which I copy pasted into my js file (if needed Click here to see the js file).

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