A little hack for reinventing your work and expanding ideas: Give your favorite case study its own standalone website.
By extracting a specific project from your body of work, you claim more ownership and association with it. Before, you’re a designer with a 3D pottery experiment on their portfolio. Pull that project out of your site and give it its own, and you’re now that guy who makes 3D pottery. People directly connect you with this piece of work.
And a funny thing happens from there.
The act of launching your project as its own story will motivate you to take it even further. Suddenly, you see your work in a new light. You notice potential in an area you overlooked before. You become inspired to add to it, try a new angle, touch up the rough edges. Sometimes, it takes you down a whole new career path.
We always enjoy seeing side project websites made with Semplice. These sites have a certain power. They elevate a small idea and make it something bigger. By simply giving focused attention to a specific project or piece of work, you make it feel special in our minds too. And all it takes is creating a simple landing page for it.
What case studies of yours deserve their own standalone website?
It doesn’t have to be anything wildly original or ironed out. Just start with whatever you have already. Copy & paste your existing case study into your new website. You will likely make some changes or additions as you design a full site around this project. When you unlink it from your other projects on your main portfolio, you release it from the narrative you’re creating for potential employers or clients. It can become its own thing.
Putting your project on its own pedestal, instead of shoving it in on a shelf with all the rest, gives it power. Our eyes are drawn to it, just as they would be to a single vase in an empty room. You know the right project for this experiment: The one you love to browse now and then for that little surge of pride. That project wants more from you, and we want to see it.