Final Project — Personal Portfolio

CS-3017: Intro to Web Design

Fall 2025

Given your knowledge of web design principles, HTML, CSS, and Bootstrap, you will create a static website that serves as your personal portfolio.

This portfolio will showcase your skills, projects, and experiences and serve as a professional online presence. It should be visually appealing, well-organized, and easy to navigate. Your portfolio should be published online using GitHub pages.

Before starting on your portfolio, you should research and gather inspiration from existing personal portfolio websites. Consider the layout, color scheme, typography, and overall design aesthetic that you would like to incorporate into your own portfolio. You should create wireframes or use Figma

Requirements

Working independently, create a collection of static content and styling files that:

  • Uses some combination of HTML, CSS, Jekyll (markdown and minimal mistakes), and Bootstrap.
  • Contains accurate and up-to-date information about you, including:
    • Photograph of yourself
    • Education
    • Skills
    • Projects
    • A contact form (using Web3Forms or similar service)
    • Work/Internship Experience (if you have it)
    • Anything else you would like to include
  • Supports responsive styling that adapts to different screen sizes to display well on desktops, laptops, and mobile devices
  • Supports navigation between the various pages
  • Passes the W3C Markup Validation Service
  • Is hosted at yourusername.github.io

Design Report

In addition to the portfolio itself, you must also submit a brief design report explaining your design decisions. This report should be between one (1) and three (3) pages in length. It should include:

  • Justification of your choice of layout and color scheme
  • Wireframe or Figma mockups of your design
  • Discussion of any challenges you faced and how you overcame them
  • The public URL for your website

This report should be submitted as a PDF file along with your portfolio files.

Commentary

As befitting a design class, this assignment is fairly open-ended. There is no "one true path" to creating and styling the required pages. Thus, this project requires you to tap your inner creativity and problem-solving.

Under-specification is fairly indicative of the real world. Clients will often expect you to "read their mind" to deliver a product that meets their needs. This can definitely be frustrating at times, but it is also a good lesson to learn early. It will help you be a high-quality developer who gains a positive reputation with clients.

A keen eye for detail and a creative spirit is also key here. Look through example page designs and see what you like and dislike. The Hello Web Design book has a number of references you can use as a starting point. Ultimately, you will want your portfolio to be a reflection of you as a person.

You may use outside references to complete this assignment. Be sure to keep a running list of citations as you work on this project. You may also use AI to assist you with styling. Be sure to keep a running list of all prompts that you use and provide these as part of your references (along with AI platform used).

Recommended Approach

Begin by creating a folder on your computer with the following name: yourusername.github.io. Replace yourusername with your actual GitHub username. For example, my GitHub username is kevinaangstadt, so I would create the folder kevinaangstadt.github.io. This folder will serve as the root directory for your portfolio website.

Open this folder in Visual Studio Code. Switch to the Git tab and click the button to initialize an empty Git repository. Next, create a new file named index.html and start building your portfolio website.

Create a commit and publish your repository as a public repository on GitHub. From the GitHub interface, follow the steps we used previously to enable GitHub Pages for your repository. Your portfolio website will now be live!

What to Submit for the Final Project

Be sure that you are submitting to the correct assignment on Gradescope! Further, be sure to make sure that you submit all required files. Don't wait until the last minute to submit (you can resubmit up to the deadline).

Submit the following:

  • *.html: all HTML files needed for your static pages
  • *.css: any additional CSS files you may have needed.
  • *.md: any markdown files you may have used (e.g., for Jekyll)
  • All asset files used in your project (e.g., profile images)
  • An HTML or TXT file containing a list of citations for resources you used to complete this project. No specific convention is required, but this list should provide sufficient information to find a copy of each resource.
  • A PDF file containing your design report.

Make sure that your files are submitted with a folder structure identical to your development machine. You will likely want to use relative URLs for assets.

To upload folders to Gradescope, you can either make a Zip file of your project (you should be able to do this on both Mac and Windows by right-clicking on the folder containing your files). Alternatively, you can use the Gradescope feature to upload a git repository.

Grading Rubric

Final Project Grading (out of 25 points):

  • 5 points: Webpage content
    • Each of the required elements is worth 1 point (see above).
  • 4 points: Webpage styling
    • 4 — Consistent and visually appealing styling across all pages. Effective use of color schemes, typography, and layout principles.
    • 2 — Basic styling applied, but lacks consistency or visual appeal.
    • 0 — Minimal or no styling applied.
    • -1 point — Pages do not display well on mobile layout.
  • 5 points: HTML Validation Passes
    • 5 — HTML validation passes with no errors or warnings.
    • 2.5 — HTML validation passes with no errors, but contains more than five (5) warnings.
    • 0 — HTML validation fails with errors.
  • 10 points: Design Report
    • 5 — wireframes or Figma mockups of your design are provided.
    • 3 — justification of your choice of layout and color scheme.
    • 2 — discussion of any challenges you faced and how you overcame them.
    • -1 points — English prose or spelling/grammar issues detract from the clarity of your report.
    • -all points — URL to public website is missing or incorrect.
  • 1 point: References
    • 1 — Standalone references file exists and contains a list of resources used for this assignment. This includes course materials.
    • 0.5 — References file exists, but might not be separate, is the wrong format, or does not adequately identify resources used for this assignment.
    • 0 — No references file provided.