Exploring the Dual Identity of Juan Ferreras: Designer and Developer

A Personal Website that Reflects the Duality of Roles

Most clients of Ferreras's studio sought more information about him when they started working together. This led to the creation of a website that answers the question of who Ferreras is without actually showcasing previous work done at the studio. The site exploits the concept of duality, reflecting his roles as both a developer and a designer, while also aiming to go off-grid instead of following a more traditional column-based layout.

The website is unique in its approach to personal branding. Instead of showcasing past projects, it focuses on expressing Ferreras's skills through the content itself. The challenge was to keep the site interesting and engaging without showcasing previous work, a challenge that Ferreras successfully overcame.

The site was built as an Express/Node.js app for the email sending functionality. It uses Pug, Sass, and Grunt to build the local assets. The design is fully responsive, working well on mobile devices, tablets, and desktops. The code is completely open source and available on GitHub.

Ferreras's research for the design involved analyzing over 50 personal sites of different successful professionals and influencers in digital design. He focused on sites that delivered a good experience even without showcasing previous work, and tried to extract the core of why they still worked. This research greatly influenced the design of his own site.

The website visually exploits the duality concept of being both a designer and a developer at the same time and emphasizes how both roles complement each other. User interaction is based on vertical scrolling with many call to actions to contact Ferreras. The whole project was completed within one month in Santa Fe, Argentina.

The design has been recognized with the Silver A' Design Award in 2017, a testament to its creative and professional remarkable design that illustrates outstanding expertise and innovation. The award is given to designs that showcase a remarkable level of excellence and introduce positive feelings, amazement, and wonder.