Portfolio Critique

Billyjeanplxiv

Billyjeanplxiv

New Member
I graduated with a Bachelors's degree in April 2019. I've been trying to find fulltime work in graphic design. I've had a few interviews and have sent out countless applications. The interviews have been for multimedia and 2D graphic designer. I have a pretty nice looking resume, but sometimes I'm wondering if my portfolio site is actually holding me back.
It's very easy for me to judge my own work, but I'm a bit biased :p

I just started getting into some aspects of 3D too, I'm by no means an expert in that area. I still think its important to show progress, and what I'm doing to be actively engaged in with design.

billybitonti.myportfolio.com

Graphic Design Portfolio

Graphic Design Portfolio of Billy Bitonti
billybitonti.myportfolio.com billybitonti.myportfolio.com

Any feedback is welcome.
 
First thing that stands out to me...
The 'contact me who wouldn't' bit... it makes me not want to contact you

Second thing... I can't right click and open stuff in another tab. I can still get your images if I want them so disabling it is pretty pointless.

Your 3D work - my area of expertise.... glass has 2 sides, so your liquid would not go to outside of the bottle. There's general texture and lighting issues too imo but I'll go easy as you're new to it... I wouldn't have it in your portfolio though if I'm honest.

Rest of the work, honestly if I'm being totally candid I've seen better and it's got a 'jack of all trades, master of none' vibe going due to the amount of different types of work you're trying to show you can do. Some of the work, which by date implies uni work, honestly looks like stuff I did in a btec foundation (basically a level ish) course before I went to university.
 
Looking at your homepage you have done 6 projects in 3 years. It says this is just a sample but it looks like to totality of your work.

Why is is graphic designers and similar all use third party hosts to market their services? This particular plaform isn't a good showcase, it makes me do all the work to find out what you have done

As @Levi said, disabling right click is really annoying. Your SM pages don't add anything useful so why even have them. You want people to come to the site from SM not go to SM from your site.

Only a contact form - no email, address or telephone.

There is no consistency to the work you do. It's a right mish-mash of everything so I'm lost as to exactly what you can do for me. Expecially as most of the stuff seems to be you just messing about with ideas.
 
Levi said:
First thing that stands out to me...
The 'contact me who wouldn't' bit... it makes me not want to contact you
Second thing... I can't right-click and open stuff in another tab. I can still get your images if I want them so disabling it is pretty pointless.
Your 3D work - my area of expertise.... glass has 2 sides, so your liquid would not go to outside of the bottle. There's general texture and lighting issues too imo but I'll go easy as you're new to it... I wouldn't have it in your portfolio though if I'm honest.
Click to expand...

Thanks for your feedback, I fixed the 'contact me, who wouldn't' thing (kinda tongue and cheeky). I'll get around to removing the 3d from my site as well. Right-click is also enabled.
fisicx said:
Looking at your homepage you have done 6 projects in 3 years. It says this is just a sample but it looks like to totality of your work.
Why is is graphic designers and similar all use third party hosts to market their services? This particular platform isn't a good showcase, it makes me do all the work to find out what you have done
As @Levi said, disabling right-click is really annoying. Your SM pages don't add anything useful so why even have them. You want people to come to the site from SM not go to SM from your site.
Only a contact form - no email, address or telephone.
There is no consistency to the work you do. It's a right mish-mash of everything so I'm lost as to exactly what you can do for me. Expecially as most of the stuff seems to be you just messing about with ideas.
Click to expand...

I'm actually using Adobe Portfolio because it comes with a creative cloud. I might look into having a wordpress site. The site limits what I can add so the contact me forum leads straight to my email, ill add the phone number and email address in.
Thanks for the feedback, ill work on reorganizing and consolidating the projects I've done into categories instead of by project.
 
There are some fantastic Wordpress themes, you don’t need one specifically designed for portfolios.

Once you get the hang of how it works you will realise the huge limitations of the adobe thing.
 
A lot of the work just looks like uni projects, which I'm guessing most of them are. Too sparse, varied and some quite weak. I would certainly lose the illustration section.
Instead, you could work some illustrations in to other made-up design projects. Packaging, brochures, websites, advertising, maps, logos etc.

Visually, that landing page is very weak with regard to the work on there. You need more stuff like the 'exposing the root' image.
 
Parent Action, Smooth Mix,Exposing the Root, and About Last night were clients. I guess that's not good if it all looks like uni work.
Chateau Ope is my own creation for a brand. I actually have very little University work on my page.

I'll ditch the illustration section.
 
Whatever I think of the work, the site itself is pretty bland and has no visual focus. Your eye is not directed anywhere in particular. Surely rule number one for someone seeking employment. If I were looking to employ straight away, I’d discount anyone who had no idea about typographic hierarchy.

This lack of flu is is further compounded by the fact you are advertising UI design as part of your skill set.
 
Sorry, I didn't mean those particular projects look particularly poor, it's just the way the landing page has been laid out, it smacks of 'This is what we
did in year 2' etc. Maybe you need to make it look more like a freelancer's site rather than an addition to your resume?
 
sprout said:
Whatever I think of the work, the site itself is pretty bland and has no visual focus. Your eye is not directed anywhere in particular. Surely rule number one for someone seeking employment. If I were looking to employ straight away, I’d discount anyone who had no idea about typographic hierarchy.

This lack of flu is is further compounded by the fact you are advertising UI design as part of your skill set.
Click to expand...

Thanks, I'll looking into directing the eye better and refining the hierarchy.
 
Billyjeanplxiv said:
Parent Action, Smooth Mix,Exposing the Root, and About Last night were clients. I guess that's not good if it all looks like uni work.
Click to expand...
Some of it does. But I'd not mention the parentaction website. It's got a whole load of problems, not least because it only scores 22/100 on the Google speed test.

But even mediocre designs can shine if well presented. The adobe thing doesn't present anything well.

And my wife thought your logo said r z. Why do you even need a logo? Far better to just have you name in the header with a tagline.
 
As opposed to some other comments, I personally think that showing a wide range of styles or designs could work to your advantage. Unless you only ever want to work on creating flyers for club nights and nothing else. I would however say that you could add some more work to your portfolio and ensure that the topics are relevant.
For example, the SmoothMix says that it is a branding project. It would be better to call it logo design. There is little to no consistency to the actual designs that have the logo on them and no branded elements or styles seem to be used. Keep working on self initiated work to build up your portfolio and you'll brush up on your general skills and learn a lot in the process.
I quite like the exposing the root logo :) It would be useful to have a bit of text highlighting what you did, where it was used and for what prupose though. For example the module image with all the screens don't make much sense to me and simply show different headings on a bunch of screens...
Check the line spacing of your text too, it varies a lot from page to page.
Keep it up, we all have to start somewhere and you've got some worthwhile designs to build on.
 
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