Building davishiggins.com: An Experimental Home for Everything I Do

I did not want another portfolio that looked like a portfolio template.

I wanted one place for my work, professional information, current roles, projects, contact paths, and direction without flattening everything into a grid of cards and a short About paragraph.

More than anything, I wanted it to feel like me.

That became davishiggins.com.

The Goal Was an Experience

The site needed to be useful first. Someone should be able to understand who I am, what I do, what I have built, where I have worked, and how to contact me without fighting the design.

But useful did not have to mean ordinary.

I wanted the site to feel experimental, animated, and complete. Typography could move. Transitions could create rhythm. The work could reveal itself through interaction while still giving a recruiter, client, collaborator, or professor the information they need.

That balance became the hardest part. Experimentation is easy when usability does not matter. Clarity is easy when nothing takes a visual risk. Doing both required far more iteration.

Why I Built It With Astro

I used Astro with TypeScript, GSAP, and SCSS.

Astro gave me a strong foundation without forcing every part of the experience into a large client-side application. I could keep the structure fast while using GSAP where movement actually added something.

That separation mattered. Animation should not exist because a library makes it easy to add. It should control attention, establish pacing, or make the transition between ideas feel intentional.

The stack gave me enough control to build the interaction system I wanted without losing the performance and organization a professional hub needs.

The Landing Page Took the Longest

The landing page looks like one page. It did not feel like one page to build.

The opening sequence, typography, responsive behavior, navigation, project presentation, hover states, scrolling, and loading experience all affected each other. A timing change that felt better on desktop could make mobile too slow. An animation could be technically smooth and still feel wrong.

I spent long, long hours on that page. What felt like hundreds of separate sessions went into building it, testing it, changing my mind, fixing what the change broke, and then refining the version that survived.

Some sessions produced an entire section. Others changed a few pixels or one timing value. People may not identify why an experience feels polished, but they can feel when it does not.

A Home for Work That Does Not Fit in One Category

My work crosses data analytics, artificial intelligence, web development, business, content, and digital product design.

That can be difficult to present cleanly. A traditional portfolio asks someone to choose one identity and make everything else secondary. I did not want that because the connection between the disciplines is the point.

The site gives Cade, Propify, Higgins Digital, CrownCode AI, analytics work, client websites, Curated Notes, and the rest of my projects one system. The homepage explains the direction quickly. Work provides the project index. About adds context. Portfolio connects the wider ecosystem.

It is a digital hub, not just a gallery.

The Part I Am Proud Of

I am proud that the site does not feel borrowed.

There are references behind every good creative project, and I studied a lot of excellent portfolio and agency work while building mine. But the final experience reflects my own mix of systems thinking, technical work, motion, typography, and experimentation.

It also represents the work behind the work. The page is meaningful because each project it displays took its own failed versions, decisions, and revisions to reach that point.

The site finally gives those things a home that feels worthy of them.

It Is Finished, Not Final

I can be proud of davishiggins.com and still see a list of things I want to improve.

That is true of almost everything I build. Finishing a version does not remove the ability to see what could be sharper. It gives the project a stable point from which the next improvement can happen.

I will keep refining the motion, adding stronger case studies, improving the writing, and adjusting the experience as my work changes. A personal site should not become a frozen version of the person who built it.

For now, it is the closest digital representation I have made of how I think and what I care about building.

That makes the hours worth it.