Portfolio Website, Finally!!

Hey, that's really good. It's the attention to detail that does it, the little things. On the portfolio page, I think it would work better if you could click anywhere on the thumbnail to bring up the details page, at which point you have the option to enlarge the image from there.

p.s. Do I remember seeing SeoPedia on 99 designs early last year?
 
Hey, well done. It looks pretty good! There's one issue I thought you might run into when you were designing your logo and that's that because it's a tall logo, it makes a right floated navigation look stranded.

Personally I think it'd look better if you swapped the twitter feed with the navigation and float the navigation to the left. I can't decide if it would look better above or below the intro text "welcome...and blog". I also can't decide whether or not it should even be there in the first place.

Your slider is visually pleasing, however, functionally aggravating. The time until transition is too quick, there are no back or forward controls and it doesn't pause on hover. If you want people to actually be impressed by your impressive work then you need to let them look at it properly, and in whatever order they want.

The icons you've used for the Small Business and Business Card Design text sections make it look like you ran out of ideas and just threw anything there. I'm sure you can think of some icons more specific to the title. The printer icon, which is a home (and often crap) printer, is not something I would equate with professional business cards, likewise nor would I relate a mouse cursor to small business.

The icons themselves are good, but I reckon if you added a little shading to them it would really help lift them of the page. For example you could have a slightly different shade of grey for each face of the pencil. You also need a bit more space between the text and the Learn More buttons, as it feels a little cramped.

I would also slightly increase the size of the header text, perhaps similar in height to the icons previously discussed, then you won't need to indent the paragraph.

I really like the recent projects area. Nothing to change there.

On your about me page... the photo.... have you uhm.. well, what I mean to say is.. did it spend much time in Photoshop? I'm also not very keen on the background or vignette.

The message feature on your site could also benefit highly from notifying the user that the message has been successfully sent. (Yes that was me testing it)

So in conclusion, great effort, needs a couple of tweaks and you're done!
 
wac - I am working on the portfolio section so you can click on the full image and then be taken to the details from there you can zoom if you like, would save on confusion. Yes I posted the SEOpedia logo last year on here, the client liked and signed it off, still not got round to launching their site yet tho, its going to be a big one.

Squiddy - Thanks for the feedback and I completely agree with everything you have said, the amount of times I have swapped the twitter and menu is ridiculous, its hard designing for yourself seems to take forever with being super fussy and wanting it to look ok.

The icons originally looked good with the content, but, I recently changed the text for search engine optimisation purposes so yes they do look a tad odd. I need to go away and re-design those.

The image of me on about is taken in my front room, (that wall paper is a pain to paint by the way.) It didn't spend a great deal of time in Photoshop no, all I have done is add vignetting, extend the image out to fit the box and smoothed the boat race out a bit. Ideally I would like an illustration there.

The message section does give a thank you message, sometimes it takes a couple of seconds to show it though? Its very strange with some people it works instantly and others well, I get 5 of the same message so guessing it hasn't worked that time. strange.

The slider does have the ability to move back and forward if you use the arrow keys, I know its not ideal and will be adding some nav buttons on now you have mentioned it.

Thank you both for your feedback, I really do appreciate it.
 
Oh you don't need to tell me about being super fussy with your own site. I had the exact same thing. I find that I try to do something that's slightly different but more often than not it doesn't look right in some way and I'll spend an age trying everything to make it work, only to decide 5 hours later that I'm just going to change it for something else, haha. I haven't even finished my site either! It's fine, all part of the learning really.

The only reason I asked about your photo is because it looks like you've gone to town with the smooth tool on your skin!

I tried it again twice, still not getting any thank you message. Win7 Firefox 13.0.1

As for the slider, well let's put it this way. I consider myself to be a very technologically competent person. If I couldn't figure out the controls of the slider then your average joe business person is most definitely not going to be able to. To include keyboard controls without any mention of it, as if it were at the status of web standard is wrong.

I've noticed something else too, note the odd jagged lines on your creative process image in the slider? It's because the image is being compressed too heavily. You need to take that image into photoshop and reduce its actual size on the website, the same goes for your photograph on the about me section and any others that are oversized. They also load quite slowly, I'm on a 50mb download connection.

Try to get your Learn More boxes to line up vertically as well, it always looks better! I imagine that you have tried, as for me the custom logo design text is only made one line longer by the last word, perhaps a resolution difference (1900x1200).

I also want to mention your footer. I think it'd be more of a unison design if the highlight effects of the footer nav were the same as those in the dropdown menu of the header. I reckon the dropdown menu would look perfect if you made the hover effect of each box change entirely to the mustard yellow colour, as for me you currently have a grey 1 pixel line above and below each section which ruins it a little for me. Also, see what you think of each social icon hover effect changing to the same mustard yellow you've used for the primary design elements.

The only, very last, positively minuscule detail that I can pick up on is that I don't think the bird drawing for the twitter feed looks too great. I think it's the body, it's quite an odd shape.
 
I didn't receive your test emails? thats deffo a cause for concern, I wonder what is going on there.

Its funny you should mention that image re-size I have just been playing around with another slider and the first slide is massive, I didn't even realise, it loads and looked ok on my screen.

I have just checked website on my laptop and the lines are off, they look fine on my MAC I have recently added more text and didn't check on different screen size. I hate it when things don't line up.

With the footer I didn't want to over kill the orange, there used to be more and it started to look bad. The social icons would look nice in orange, nice subtle effect.
 
Its got alot going for it - the only thing I would change as a fundamental flaw is the twitter feed at the top - you're tempting people away from browsing your home page and viewing your work before they get there :)
 
I imagine he was forced into placing it there when trying to figure out the header layout. Smad has a point, and wit the harsh contrast it does make it feel like the most prominent section on the page, which seems odd. Perhaps just remove it from the header completely. Most websites seem to have some kind of illustration in place to aid with instant service recognition. i.e. how long it takes people to find out exactly what you do.

I've decided now that I'm not too keen on the hover effects for the Learn More buttons, not sure if they have changed or I just didn't notice them before. It would look better with a highlight effect instead of swapping the colours round on hover.
 
I have just noticed a problem on portfolio page with closing </a> tags will get onto it now. I do want the twitter feed on the site I just need to think of a place to include it.
 
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