Lomanized

Lomanized is one of the greatest photographers I know. Genuinely kind person. Someone I consider a brother. When he asked me to build his portfolio, I didn’t treat it like a client job. I treated it like something that actually mattered.

I’ve designed it twice. Once in 2023 as one of my first real independent projects, and again in 2025. Same person, same work, completely different outcome. See it live.

This was early. I was still figuring out what a portfolio was supposed to feel like, and I overcompensated. Big type, heavy layout, lots happening on every page. It wasn’t bad work. But it was trying too hard to be impressive instead of just being good.

The ideas are there. But there’s a nervousness to it, a need to fill every inch and prove something. Loma was gracious about it. He always is. That’s the kind of person he is.

By 2025 I’d learned that restraint is a skill. The redesign stripped back almost everything. Less type on screen at once. More space between elements. A layout that trusts the photography to carry the page, because his work is genuinely that good.

The brief didn’t change. Loma didn’t change. What changed was how much I felt I needed to say to make it work. Turns out, almost nothing.

The second version is quieter. Typography does less. Whitespace does more. His images breathe instead of competing with a layout for attention. When your client’s work is this strong, the best thing the design can do is get out of the way.

I also built it. Doing both design and development on the same project changes how you make decisions. You stop designing things that look good in Figma but fall apart in the browser. Having built v1 helped a lot with v2.

The best thing about doing a project twice for someone you care about is that you actually want to get it right. Not for the portfolio. For them. That changes how you work. There’s no analytics dashboard for a portfolio like this, the test was simpler: does it make you want to look at the next photo instead of closing the tab. By that bar, v2 is the first version I’d actually call finished.

Good design often means having the confidence to take things away. That’s harder than adding. It took two years and one repeat client who’s also a brother for me to really understand that.

v3 is coming soon.