The Dram Report
This one's just for fun. I built The Dram Report as a hobby site for myself and a few friends. After searching for a website or app to track the whiskies I've tried and enjoyed, I was unable to find a platform I really liked. So I made it myself.
While this wasn't a project I built for work, I believe it exemplifies my skills and my ability to create something from scratch - all within a rather impressive timeframe...
Featured Skills
All in a Week's Work
I approached this project much like any other: discovery, information architecture, wireframing, design, etc. The only difference is that I built this for me. I am the product owner or "client" here, but I'm also the designer. And the developer. And project manager...
Because I'd been searching for an existing solution, I had a pretty good idea of the features and information I wanted to include in this project. It would be easy to get carried away here, including every last detail imaginable. The site is mostly made for myself and my friends, but I wanted to ensure it was useful for others who come across it as well. So it needed to be informative, but also approachable - getting too far into the weeds wouldn't really benefit anyone in this case.
Once I'd documented the overall IA and sketched out some initial wireframes, I turned my attention to the brand and designs. Lately, I've been loving the fonts by Dan Cederholm over at SimpleBits. I combined a favorite from there with some Scotland-inspired greens and a simple logo featuring glencairns (the traditional whisky glassware).
My inspiration for the site design itself was from a tasting notebook. I wanted it to feel almost like a page from such a notebook, so I used narrow content boxes with white backgrounds against a dark green page background to help convey that idea. Each whiskey entry is almost like a printed report in that sense.
At first glance, the site appears to be fairly simple. But there's a lot of care that went into making it look great regardless of how much detail was added to an entry. Even a simple entry - though rather light on content - still feels as if it belongs.
What's more, I took this from "I should just make my own" to a live, fully-functional product in about 1 week. Is it totally finished? No - there are a number of little things I want to add to it over time. But this is a great example of my ability to take something from nothing to launched very quickly.
Slàinte Mhath
I'm pretty proud of how it all turned out, and I'm excited to continue adding to it. Check it out for yourself. If nothing else, I hope you'll find it to be a useful resource in trying something new or picking up a gift.
