Critique my new portfolio site

Dave!

Hey folks,

I've been trying to redo my portfolio website over the past few weeks cos I'm going to Australia next week and was hoping to try get a job as a junior designer/developer if possible.

Just wondering if you could give me some feedback on it please

www.davidmcginn.ie

I know that the contact page is crap, I'll add a contact form at some point in the future but was having a bit of trouble with the one I wanted, so I just left it.

Obviously my portfolio is fairly crap I'm just getting started in the bidniss, so was more hoping to show prospective employers that I can actually do some things. I'm gonna add a jQuery horizontal scrolling function for the page in the future.

The signature thing in the footer is probably a bit silly, but I'm just trying it out

I think the blog turned out okay. I'm still trying to learn about Wordpress, so I just chose a theme called 'Cleanr' and then edited it quite heavily.

Anyways any thoughts are welcome

Dave!

24 views and no thoughts? :eek:

Bob_Harris

If you are going to go with the whole "big text" thing I don't think Times New Roman is the font to use.

In the portfolio section when you click on some sites they pop up as an image, while others navigate to the site. Seems a bit inconsistent. I'd opt with all of them popping up as an image, with an optional "visit this site" link.

Dave!

Bob_Harris wrote: »

If you are going to go with the whole "big text" thing I don't think Times New Roman is the font to use.

In the portfolio section when you click on some sites they pop up as an image, while others navigate to the site. Seems a bit inconsistent. I'd opt with all of them popping up as an image, with an optional "visit this site" link.

Cheers

The ones that pop up as an image are just mockups, the ones that go to the site are obviously the live ones I'll make it more obvious which are which

Thanks !

John-Holmes

IMO big text isn't a good fit for any site so I would scale that down to a 10 or 12.
Could the Designed by: hover over be replaced? It looks like something is missing down in the bottom right of the page
No complaints about the Portfolio page
About text again is a bit big for my liking. Are you doing this because there isn't much text? If this is the case, then you could include some more about yourself, maybe mention languages you are familiar with.
Keep the blog clean if you can. If you are going to show this site to potential employers you don't want to be talking about chancing some dodgy women in copper face jacks or what ever.

Colour scheme seems to be grand. I didn’t have the urge to rub my eyes anyway.

Good luck with what ever you do man! Jesus I wish I was going to Sydney.

foxinsox

Hi Dave,

Lucky you going to Australia, best of luck with that!

I'm not a real techie so will not comment on the actual design packages you used because I don't know them. So as a regular browser of the tinterweb and a owner of my own business I would say:

Big print/font is not doing anything for your site, makes it look childish. As mentioned above reduce it to 10 or 12 and maybe Arial or Verdana or similar font.

I like the signature at the bottom.

Too much use of abbreviations, I'm old school, proper spellings and no abbreviations, there seems to be a lot of you'll, they'll and you're. Thata just me. I would spend a bit more time on the wording and layout to sell yourself in a more professional manner.

As mentioned above (I just glanced through your blog) if there is anything unprofessional ie: nights out etc. it is not appealing to employers imo.

When you talk about Tallaght, your local area, you will be in Australia, they may not know that Tallaght is the name of your town.

So I would say generally a re read of the wording and think of reading it as not knowing anything about you or reading it from the other side of the world.

Hope this is some help. . and best of luck with the job hunting.

cormee

As mentioned by everyone else text is far too big and your portfolio links should be consistent - open as lightbox images or directly to the sites, but don't mix them, if you are mixing them you need to indicate that.

Besides that there's nothing else to comment on. The site has a serious lack of everything. It doesn't demonstrate any technical or design capabilities, all I have ascertained from visiting the site is that you know basic CSS and you can install Wordpress .

It's your portfolio site, you're supposed to be using it to impress prospective employers. You need to do a lot more work on it.

nellyshark

Hi,

My two cents

Ill like the Big typography. Glad to see you were watching for the trends of 2009 which are set to continue.

I like the signature, don't know why, just do.

Portfolio (and for that matter: the whole website) should be consistent.

For me, I dont know whether a personal blog should be on a professional website. Maybe you should have users follow you (personally) as opposed to having a personal blog on a professional website (if that makes sense outside of my head?)

Is that wordpress?

Best of luck in oz mate B-)

Edit:
You already know the contact page is a disaster

Webmonkey

Hey Dave,

I have to agree with the rest, the text is just too big. It looks like I'm back to 640x480 resolution monitor!

Times new roman is by far the most disgusting font to use on web sites as well! - Arial would be grand but make it bit blander looking but thats because the text is too big.

You need some sort of photos or pictures somewhere also. Text only is off putting.

While I'm in love with that dark grey colour, the red in top does not match with it properly. It's too bright. However, quite a few colours go with that gray... dark green, dark blue or orange.

The logo is also a bit boring.

Hope these don't put you off web design but you need to be criticized to improve.