A special thanks to the creator who inspired the design, structure, and user experience of my personal space on the web.
Building a personal portfolio is always a journey. It is a space where we showcase our skills, share our thoughts, and present our professional identity to the world. But as developers, we rarely build things in a vacuum. We stand on the shoulders of giants and draw inspiration from the amazing open-source community around us.
When I started conceptualizing the look and feel of this website, I came across an incredibly well-designed project that immediately caught my eye. I want to take a moment to give proper credit where it is heavily due.
The Inspiration
The beautiful UI design, the clean aesthetic, and the foundational structure of this portfolio were heavily inspired by the exceptional work of Chánh Đại.
When I saw their repository, I was immediately drawn to the attention to detail, the seamless typography, and the overall user experience. It provided the perfect blueprint for what I wanted to achieve.
You can find their original project and explore their amazing work here:
- GitHub Repository: ncdai/chanhdai.com
- Live Portfolio: chanhdai.com
- Twitter / X: @iamncdai
Making It My Own
While the visual design and structural roots belong to Chánh Đại, I have taken this foundation and adapted it to fit my specific technical stack and personal needs. Under the hood, I completely restructured the project into a custom monorepo (which you can read more about in my other posts!), connected it to my own backend APIs, and tailored the content to reflect my own professional journey.
However, a great backend needs a great frontend to shine, and I couldn't be happier with how this UI turned out, thanks to that initial spark of inspiration.
Thank You
To Chánh Đại: If you ever stumble upon this corner of the internet, thank you. Your work is inspiring, and your willingness to share your code openly is what makes the developer community so fantastic. Keep building amazing things!
If you are a developer reading this, I highly encourage you to check out their GitHub profile and support their work.