(Almost) final version of my portfolio now uploaded.
I am still not happy with the header but due to restricted fonts at college will experiment with more soon.
Also not sure about the colours and may come back to these dependant on feedback from others.
My second screen design for my portfolio is now uploaded*.
I have tried to incorporate the feedback I was given and remove the large black border and text. I have incorporated a smaller grey border around my design (as was suggested by Scott) however I am still not sure about it. I am also not sure about my navigation it seems a little lost and out of place.
I have yet to have chance to experiment with some more colour/logo ideas, though I will hopefully be posting a mid-week blog with these ideas included.
My initial design for my portfolio is also available for comparison.
*Note: The 'Crigglestone Nursery' image is only temporary and will be changed on my final design to one more suitable.
My initial design for my portfolio is now uploaded.
I've gone for a very simple idea with a high contrast border around the outside to hopefully draw the users attention directly into the centre of my site with my content.
Any feedback is as always appreciated.
The first site I looked at was a student site - www.lynde.net/ found through www.sessions.edu/
Upon first entering the site I was a little shocked to see a very small containing box. This made me think almost instantly that it severely limited the amount of work which could be displayed at any one time. I then noticed the picture on the front page with the 'tagline' for the site, 'Great design. Great business.' Although this is quite an adequate tagline I do not think there is a need for it to take up the whole of the front page when it could easily have being some of his work.
The colour scheme I feel could also do with some work. The page background has stripes which are very close together which begin to hurt your eyes after a while and the main body of text is black and a bright orange background. This doesn't give the best contrast and also begins to hurt your eyes after a little while.
Clicking through to the portfolio section of the site what immediately hits me is the navigation. Only one piece of work is shown at a time on the site yet there are 25 pages worth of work. The reason I know there is 25 pages is because the navigation is purely page numbers. This I feel is a very bad way of making the user navigate the site as it is difficult to remember what page has what on it and if there is anything of interest on that page without clicking on it.
As well as this, when hovering over a page number it is actually a different page number which changes to the hover state. (I.e. Hover over 9 and page 8 will change to '9' and be bold but if you try and click on it, it will then change back to 8 - very confusing). The site is also will not validate despite being only HTML 4.01 Transitional and with very little on it. For a prospective employer this could be very important and shows a more in depth knowledge of the industry.
The second site I looked at was a professional portfolio - http://www.cagedfish.co.uk/
This site is very bold and in your face as soon as you enter. The colour scheme is bright pink and could be too bright for some users. The main body of text however uses a white background with black text which gives good contrast between the two and makes the text easy to read.
The navigation is a little awkward from the homepage as it is at the bottom of the site and you must hover over different fish before you can tell what the link is. The navigation is also at text at the bottom of the screen also but to me this would just confuse the user more as it appears that there is navigation all over and new users may not know where to click.
Once on to the portfolio section however the navigation is much better as a list of recent projects are down the right hand side and clearly labelled.
The portfolio is also divided into an ecommerce section and a print section. I personally think this is quite a good idea as it stops the navigation becoming too long and also allows people looking for more specialist services to see them more easily than looking through everything.
Perhaps the biggest shock for a professional design portfolio is that it doesn't validate. In fact it doesn't even have a doc type. This seems like quite a basic mistake to make and would severely affect my views about the company. On top of this the site is created using table and cells due to what appears to be a site created from a template. Although to most clients this would probably not be an issue as they would not know such things, to people with even a little bit of experience it must be very off putting for them.
My screen designs for my iTunes redesign are now uploaded to my 'Tune In' blog.
Any feedback would be appreciated.
