A space that feels like mine
I built and maintain Hicarl myself as a place to share my work, experience, and the things I learn along the way. A résumé gives someone a quick overview, but I wanted more room to explain what a project involved and why particular decisions mattered.
I also wanted the website to be a project I could keep improving. It gives me a reason to think about the whole experience, from the first page someone sees to the way I publish a new story.
Giving each page a purpose
I organized the site around a few simple questions. Who am I? What have I worked on? What am I learning? How can someone reach me?
That became the foundation for About, Projects, Blog, and Contact. I wanted the navigation to stay familiar, with enough personality in the typography, spacing, and colour to make the site feel personal.
The project pages give me space to explain the problem, my contribution, and the engineering behind the result. The blog serves a different purpose: a place for reflections that do not need to become a formal case study.
Working across screen sizes
Building with Next.js and React meant thinking in reusable pieces. Shared cards, page headings, navigation, and content rendering help keep the experience consistent as the site grows.
I paid attention to smaller screens too. A layout that looks comfortable on a desktop can feel crowded on a phone, especially around navigation and longer sections. Checking both helped me make more deliberate choices about spacing and content.
Keeping it personal
One of the most useful steps was replacing sample content with work I can actually talk about. I would rather have one meaningful project page than a long collection that does not reflect my experience.
Hicarl is still evolving. For now, I want it to be clear, useful, and recognizably mine: a place where the work has enough context to tell its own story.
