New Portfolio Website

ashdown8

Junior Member
Hi all,

I have recently redesigned my portfolio site. Looking at it over and over I feel it is good but parhaps could be better on certain pages ( mainly the 'portfolio' and 'about' pages)

The main questions Im asking are:

Should I add a picture of me in the about page as well as more info on my skills?

Would the portfolio page be more effective with a different layout?

www.markashdowndesigns.com

I've asked other people about this but as you guys are in the same industry, your opinion is more valuable to me!

Any feedback or ideas on how I can improve the site would be very helpful.

Thanks!
 
Not meaning to sound harsh, but this is critique…
This is supposed to be your showcase of yourself to anyone that wants to view it, the very best you can do to sell your skills as a designer and as the right man for the job, It's not doing either.
Take a look at Alexarts Portfolio of the graphic designer Alexey Abramov, you should see immediately, it is different, its considered, sorry to be blunt but yours isn't, and what is that awful typeface you used to title portfolio and CV.

Go back to the drawing board, get a concept and take it to the Nth degree, polish it, polish it, polish it.

As if I havent written bluntly enough already. Ask yourself a question, be truthful. Are you a designer or are you a developer? Two very different roles with very different skill sets, looking at the site you have done I would say developer, but for a developer's site it needs to have more 'look at the amazing technical things i can do' going on.
 
I'm not sure I should comment, newer/younger members on this forum seem to dislike it when I give honest but negative reviews....
 
Levi said:
I'm not sure I should comment, newer/younger members on this forum seem to dislike it when I give honest but negative reviews....

Don't hold back, they ask for feedback. It might make it interesting.
 
Thanks for the reply and for being honest. I am still learning when it comes to the web. I have taken your critique on board and will look at redesigning my website.
 
I'll sort out a review a bit later tonight, it won't be pretty in all honesty but if you're open enough to take it onboard along with other people's views then you should come out with something better.
 
Damn it, just deleted the post by mistake... I'll start again. :mad: Might be more bullet point this time though.

First off Iagree with kayak_nut in that the site needs to show you in your best light, the current site doesn't.

Home page:
I'm not a fan of the 'dirty water' grey and the blue together.

Rounded corners on the 'cards' - you need to make them smaller on the inner corner or they look off. Think of it like you're looking down a cone.

The 'cards' are a different blue to the twitter plugin.

The twitter plugin is shorter than the CV/Portfolio and it looks odd.

Why do you have 2 menus, it's not going to help your seo or anything.

It's also disjointed from the rest of the site.

And the portfolio/cv font is so out of context with the rest of the site

Portfolio page:
I'm not sure that the work shown on here is the best you can produce.

The integritie site for example has a poor resolution imagery on it's site (the key/shadow really stands out as low res). The portsmouth college one could link to the actual page rather thean the college home page.

HTML Email Designs - not a fan of this type of work, it's usually the equivalent of a digital junk mail, but there is a market for it unfortunately.

The Print Work - Are you honestly saying that 4 pretty much identical pieces of work is the best work you've done in print while at uni... They're not even that hard to do when you think about it. You have a black background, a yellow/orange nike symbol up top, a cut out image(s) in the middle and then a yellow/orange line with a block of left aligned text at the bottom. This will sound really harsh but I've seen people doing that at gcse level or below, they're only really a 30minute job for most of the regular designers on here. I'm pretty sure you've probably done better work.

CV/About Pages
Why do you need 2 pages for this, you could easily combine the two.

Overall Feel of Site
It just feels like you haven't spent time planning it out. To me it literally looks like you've stuck a white box in the middle and then aligned the images to the middle and the text to the left.

The facebook, twitter, linkedin links seem like an after thought which has just been stuck on as it's in fashion. You could have spent some time 'blending' them into the design.

Recommendations
Take a step back from the design, clearly define your target market and then draw (pen and paper first :)) some more ideas for a layout which shows you in a better light.
Find the BEST work you have done and use that on your site, if you have limited options available we do have some old competitions in a lower section of the forum.

Take on board what people have said and you should come out with a better product to sell yourself with, that's basically what a website if for.
 
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