Case study — Personal Portfolio
ciaraneddy.com
A personal portfolio for a software engineer. Built to get a job. Stayed to become something more.
The brief
Built for himself. Used by everyone else.
This is Ciaran's own site. He's Firefinch's lead developer — which means the brief was as personal as a brief gets. It started as a job application tool. It worked. But the site has since grown into something more than that.
What began as a way to present a CV has become a place of identity — a record of work, a reflection of how Ciaran actually thinks, and a platform that will keep growing. A blog and a visual retheme are already in the works.
The approach
Blending the story with the work.
The design started with two inputs: research into portfolios Ciaran genuinely admired, and his own story. The aim was to surface the thread that runs through everything he does — a deep interest in how systems work and how to make them better.
That thread goes back further than software. It's there in competitive swimming, in modding Minecraft as a kid, in teaching in East Africa. The site needed to reflect the whole person, not flatten them into a CV.
The aesthetic
Dark by design. Warm by choice.
The dark theme was deliberate. Dark interfaces are native to the world of software — most developer tools are dark by default — but they also create a sense of focus that a light site rarely achieves.
The single amber accent does most of the character work: warm without being loud, and distinctive in a landscape of blue and purple tech portfolios. Typography followed the same logic — Syne for headings, Plus Jakarta Sans for body text. Considered, not arbitrary.
The joy philosophy
Small decisions that show someone cared.
One of the convictions that now shapes how Firefinch approaches web work started here: good websites should have moments of delight in them. Small things that reward attention. Details that people notice without quite knowing why.
Those moments are woven into ciaraneddy.com quietly — and the philosophy carried forward. Into the Firefinch site itself, where it became hand-drawn icons, subtle motion, and interactions that feel considered rather than decorative.
Under the surface
Built to last. Built to grow.
The site has been through significant evolution beneath the surface. It moved from Firebase to Vercel — a decision about both performance and a cleaner developer workflow. The Next.js version has tracked from 13 all the way through to 16.
Full SEO setup and performance tuning throughout. A codebase structured to be extended — because the site was always intended to grow. The blog and retheme already in progress are the next chapters.
Experience timeline — professional history presented clearly, without reading like a Word document.
A portfolio site should grow with the person it represents. This one will.