5 replies to this topic

[Takatoshi]

Hi all,

I have recently revamped my portfolio site, would it be possible for anyone to have a look and give me some feedback, please be aware its 90% done, so there are a few things still being done.

you can see it at Garfs Portfolio

Thank you

Edited by Takatoshi, 12 September 2007 - 08:36 AM.

[Pax]

The Good:
-Design is clean (I'm personally not a fan of pink, but it seems more and more guys are...The company I work at is getting pink resumes for graphic designers )

-Lots of work to show off. You don't need to work as hard to "prove yourself".

The Bad:
-Phantom navigation on your portfolio (the scrolling page up and down). Biggest pet peeve of people using Flash. If you're going to put some sort of interaction on your website, then make it so people know its there! If you don't want to put hte buttons on there, figure out some way so that the content doesnt dissapear. Use your Actionscript skills your "About Me" page professes you have and code up a vertical carousel for your images and have it scroll through that. If you don't hide your content, you don't need to worry about explaining the interaction to the user.

- Autoplaying music....if you're not a band, you don't do it. I don't like having my good music wrecked by your not so good music. Oh, and do you have rights to use that music? It is illegal if you don't have the permission from the creator .


Things to change:

- Make links in your blog section clickable. Otherwise nobody will visit, since you can't even highlight the text to copy and paste it.

- Current status box seems out of place. Try something else for it, or remove it all together. Typically the idea of a portfolio is to showcase your work so someone would hire you. Add in a "services" page to highlight what you do. That will inform people that you are looking to be hired, and will fit in with the rest of your site.

- Get an email addy at the url of your website. It's more professional. I for one would never hire someone using a generic free email for their business.

- I would leave your My Space page off of your site. This is your business page, not your personal blog. Keep it to business.

- Use more of the blue from the mp3 player in the site. Nothing stands out when its all pink. The blue would provide nice contrast for headers.

So yea...sorry if I sound like I'm bashing. I'm a Flash developer and I don't like seeing anything but the best from Flash, since so many people give Flash a bad rap due to the sub-par websites they go to. My personal website isn't even in Flash, just because I don't want to turn people off. From what you have on your site the only thing that really requires Flash is the mp3 player that wont stop playback while changing pages. You may want to consider doing it in HTML. Just something to think about.

In spite of all the negative I have said, its a good start on the site. Keep working on it.

[faulk]

A lot of good points made by Pax. Here's a couple more:

Pax, on Sep 13 2007, 09:26 AM, said:

Oh, and do you have rights to use that music? It is illegal if you don't have the permission from the creator .

This is a very good point. Please know that copyright rules are in place for a reason (and can be argued as one of the key elements that separate a true designer from a novice).

Good loading time, are you loading external movies for all of your text, etc? If not, you should and you can improve your loading time even more

The need for an mp3 player on your portfolio is debatable. Autostart is mostly not needed unless, like Pax said, you are designing a music-based website. If you are really attached to the mp3 player, jazz it up more so its not so plain with the rest of your site design.

Yes get rid of the phantom scrolling. In most portfolio cases the default flash scrollbar works great when you mod it to fit the colours of your site. Try it out and see how it looks.

It appears that you are a great illustrator and have good work. Show it more!! No one cares to read about your work, they want to see it! Show examples of your work, and if possible the process behind it. This will captivate potential clients and employers much better than a couple blocks of text.

Which reminds me, change your font up. I'm assuming you're using Verdana or another sans-serif that's close to it. While there's a lot of knowledge behind fonts I don't really care to get into that much, but try something like a serif font, maybe Georgia.

Leave your MySpace out of the mix. Keep personal and business relations separate.

All and all, you have a good start it just needs more effort to make people really say "wow" at your work. Oh! and don't forget.. your work is the most important part of the portfolio (keep that in mind while designing).

I hope my constructive criticism helps you out, please keep me updated on your work!

[PaintingBlack]

The Bad
First off, make your site Valid XHTML.

Second would be to take away the music. Keep it off for default, and let the user decide if he/she wants it playing. Also, some of the songs don't have names, they're marked as Undefined - Undefined.

Third is to add some sort of rollover effect on the buttons at the top. Make it a slightly darker/lighter shade on rollover, nothing too extreme.

Fourth: Add links to your sites in your Portfolio, and home page. And add an in-flash scrollbar. I can't tell what to do in your portfolio, I just moved my mouse until it decided to scroll.

Fifth, never make me have to scroll down on a flash page. Ever.

Sixth, add links to your contact page, so that we don't have to type things. People are lazy.

And for the good?
Nicely animated transitions.
Great vector (I'd assume) work.
The site is nice to look at, very appealing. Good job, even with all the negatives. Can't be perfect!

[Lastcrime]

hmm just taking a quick look ive deffinately seen a site very similar to this before is even had the same bubles coming out, lol maybe it was yours just different colours i dono, but it looks identical to another site.

[genozider]

It is clean and neat .

However,
1st . I don't get interacted with your website, nothing makes me feel interested.
2nd . You are not making the use of flash properly, it's flash so make is more animated with INTERACTION.
3rd . something wrong with the size of the website i think.