Choosing Colour and Type for a Personal Brand
Your portfolio makes a judgement call in the first half second. Colour and type are doing almost all of that work.
A personal brand does not need a logo suite. It needs a palette and a typeface that stay consistent everywhere you appear.
Pick one accent, not three
One saturated colour against a neutral background reads as confident. Three accents read as indecision. Choose the accent for the emotion you want attached to your work: warm for approachable, deep and cool for technical.
Build the neutrals carefully
Most of your site is neutral. Slightly warm greys feel human, pure greys feel clinical. Pick a background, a surface, a border and two text tones, then stop.
Two typefaces at most
A display face for headings and a workhorse for body text. If a single family has enough weights, use it alone and vary size and tracking instead.
Test contrast early
Aim for at least 4.5:1 on body text. An accent that only works on a white background will break the first time you build a dark section.
Write it down
Hex values, font sizes and spacing steps in one file. A brand you have to re-decide every project is not a brand yet.