The day where I wanted to create a new portfolio

On Saturday March 15, 2025, I felt the urge to redo my portfolio. I'd deactivated the old one, which no longer looked like me and highlighted my skills as a developer.

In the meantime, I've evolved, and so have my priorities. And over the past year, art and design have returned to the forefront of my life. What's more, last month I was able to work on the logo for Florie Frivolité, and it was such a pleasure to do it, it made me want to get back into freelance graphic design more seriously.

I still have my job as Product Designer at Meilisearch and I'm very happy there, with no intention of leaving. But I needed and wanted a bit more creative freedom, and to work more seriously on my graphic design and illustration skills. And balancing the technical side of UX/UI design with a freer, more personal creative output keeps me motivated and inspired.

Choosing a name

This stage is never the easiest. Since I started working, I've never dared use my real surname: Moncoucut. Firstly, because of the need to keep my private life separate from my professional life, but also because very few people can pronounce or write it right the first time. But it's my name, and it hasn't always been easy to wear, and bad jokes were common at school. And today I've decided to embrace it fully.

It probably comes from the Occitan language, where “coucut” means “cuckoo”, or “mound”, and “mon” hill. The cuckoo isn't exactly the nicest of birds. But its song is one of the symbols of spring, and I like that.

There's also the roots aspect that speaks to me, as I've always had trouble feeling at home, even in my own family. I find a kind of rootedness through the history and language of my ancestors, and I try to find a form of strength and stability in that.

Starting a visual identity

Normally, I'd start by working on a logo to represent my business. But this time I'm changing my approach. I'm going to try and transcribe parts of my personality. What do I like at the moment? What have I always liked and been attracted to? Art nouveau, the old, nature, clouds, light reflections, water, the smell of mimosa, purple.

From there, I put together a moodboard on Milanote (see page cover), and created a color palette. I really like the result, it's inspiring and I think I'm going to have a lot of fun with it.

I've also started making some sketches for a possible logo/signature. Perhaps the most difficult step of all. Shoemakers with bad shoes and all that...

Creating the website

Well, I'm probably starting very early. But I wanted to test Hostinger's tools. I took advantage of an interesting hosting sale, so this is my chance. I've chosen a template and I'll probably modify it until it reflects my image, and ends up completely different from the beginning.

Next steps

Progress on the visual identity and start filling the website.

Astro girlies will tell me that doing this in the middle of a Venus and Mercury retrograde, just after an eclipse, and while everything is in Aries, is probably not a good idea. But hey, for once we're going to take a risk and put my Aries MC to work, so we'll see what happens! 😄