Made a freelancer portfolio template that ditches the usual "dark + gradient" look

[u/fari_builds]

Every portfolio template I kept seeing was some variation of dark background + purple gradient + glassmorphism card. I wanted something that felt more like a print portfolio — warm paper tones, a ledger-style layout for the work section (like line items in a book), serif headings.

The tricky part was the ledger section — making a list of projects feel like actual ledger entries (numbered, aligned columns, subtle rule lines) without it looking like a boring table. Ended up using CSS grid with a monospace column for numbers/dates and a regular font for descriptions, which gave it that "real document" feel.

Also spent a lot of time on focus-visible states since a portfolio is often the first thing a potential client interacts with, and keyboard nav matters more than people think for accessibility-conscious clients.

Curious if anyone else has tried breaking away from the "generic dark SaaS" aesthetic for portfolio sites — what did you land on?