Portfolio Site Review

S.M.B.

Unfortunately I don't have too much work to display on my site but it's something I'm working on.

Any feedback would be really appreciated.

www.brian-hughes.com

p

What's the aim of this site? Are you currently looking for client work, looking for a job etc...?

S.M.B.

Kind of a bit of both I guess.

I'm mainly looking for a job but it's also somewhere that I'd direct potential clients to as I try to build up a bigger body of work.

Tim M-U

i like the portfolio! the gigrol website is good looking! i see you used wordpress . you might want to get rid of this footer:

Blog powered by wordpress.

as this may show that your a freebie.

just get rid of the html in bold:

<div id="footer">
<p>Copyright © 2009 Brian Hughes, all rights reserved. Blog powered by <a href="http://www.wordpress.com">wordpress</a&gt;.</p>
</div> <!-- end footer div -->

S.M.B.

Thanks Tim M-U, but what's wrong with saying my blog is powered by wordpress?

FireballM

i think the font of the opening paragraph is too big, it dominates the page & i think it makes it kind of hard to read, if you made this smaller & maybe had a screen shot of one of your websites to the side of it- it might make a bigger impact. i love the text under the menu buttons when you hover over them!

foxinsox

As above poster mentioned..

I think the font for Hi I'm brian... is too big..

My own personal take: where you have detailed the project, roles etc. I think its Times font you've used. I wopuld use a blockier font.. it looks out of line... maybe arial? tab the details so they are all aligned rather than in and out, just might look better.

Not mad on the zig zaggy blue top and baseline..like the blue just not the zig zag..

Other than that looks great

Tim M-U

S.M.B. wrote: »

Thanks Tim M-U, but what's wrong with saying my blog is powered by wordpress?

you may have heard of, weebly or webs. These are predesigned web builders and you can make them from there website. they host it, publish it and design most of it. this may make you look lazy and a cheapskate.

also, some people might click on the link at the bottom of the website, and discover that they can make a website easy (which it isn't, lot of work it you start from scratch)

herya

Decent work OP, I agree about the font and element size in general being too big - it's not even fashionable anymore I have big resolution and I can see the header and not much else, it's probably advisable to show off your designs more without forcing people to scroll. Your header text is rather long, maybe make it more snappy.

IMO fair play to you for leaving "powered with WP" if that's what you used. I personally find it funny when people set up WP or Joomla websites and remove references, as if you couldn't see it anyway.

Axwell

herya wrote: »

IMO fair play to you for leaving "powered with WP" if that's what you used. I personally find it funny when people set up WP or Joomla websites and remove references, as if you couldn't see it anyway.

The general public or your clients arent going to know its wordpress or joomla, you are trying to get work and using this to show your services and portfolio. If a client comes along looking at the site and sees powered by wordpress or joomla and does a bit of reading suddenly they are going to think why should they pay this guy to do a site when they can throw one together in 5 minutes themselves. Obviously they cant but by leaving the link their you are leaving the possibility of losing clients. Wordpress and Joomla are just tools to help create a site, they dont make instant web designers/developers out of people.

Pixelcraft

exactly, and there's nothing wrong or devaluing by using open source cms or blog engines. Why build a cms up from scratch when there may be no need

S.M.B.

Thanks for the replies,

I was thinking the large intro might be a bit too dominating so I'll have a look at reducing it or possibly removing it altogether.

foxinsox wrote:

My own personal take: where you have detailed the project, roles etc. I think its Times font you've used. I would use a blockier font.. it looks out of line... maybe arial? tab the details so they are all aligned rather than in and out, just might look better.

I just reailsed while testing on someone else's computer that there was a minor problem with the css. My default font is Verdana so I didn't notice it until then. Tabbing the details is something I hadn't thought of.

As for the inclusion of the wordpress link, what I think I'll do is just have it on my blog page as that's the only reason I'm using wordpress anyway.

Thanks again for the replies, any other feedback would still be appreciated,

S.M.B.

So I made a few changes to the design based on feedback and removed the large block of intro test.

I'm happy to have my actual content above the fold but I'm also a bit worried that it's a little plain now.

Link

Tim M-U

thats good now! excellent!:cool:

lostprophetsie

I hate to say it but I prefer the first design, the one you still have on your blog. If you made the size of the text in the piece you removed smaller it would have been nice.

Even though the site does look a lot simpler now it still looks good. Just to throw that in the mix

S.M.B.

lostprophetsie wrote: »

I hate to say it but I prefer the first design, the one you still have on your blog. If you made the size of the text in the piece you removed smaller it would have been nice.

Even though the site does look a lot simpler now it still looks good. Just to throw that in the mix

Yeah, I think the same myself. Going to play around with it a bit more and see what I come up with.

S.M.B.

So I decided to compromise in the end and just reduce the leading text rather than remove it completely.

Original Version

Updated Version

Thanks for the feedback.