portfolio website reloaded

Hi guys and gals -

I recently completed my portfolio website, and would love to get your feedback on it.

The website is intended to be an overview of completed projects and products, targeting hiring managers rather than soliciting clients or freelance work. I’d like feedback primarily on legibility, layout, image choices, and if it has that certain je ne sais quoi sizzle factor.

I have very thin skin, so please be nice. Just kidding. Bring it on.

Thank you.

Nice stuff, although your title for this topic made me think you were a student. Something about “slippyfish: portfolio website” didn’t read 12 years of experience to me.

But your work is nice. I really like the bike sketches (nice and loose)

Lose the grid background, or tone it down. It’s so tacky. I know it was a layout designed by someone else, but wayyyy too many lines. Imply a grid, don’t smack someone on the head with it.

Not really much depth into your process, though. Seems more like a gallery with captions (exactly what I hate about Coroflot).

I concur, definately a great display of ID talents.

Some nit-picky things. I also agree with tarngerine about the grid. Take it way back. I don’t understand why there is a hide menu option and why there is a News section for hiring managers. It may be redundant, I would like to see your duties and accomplishments for each company in the about me section.

The only major thing is the navigation and organization. The nav arrows in the portfolio are too small. It took me a while to notice them. And this is just a personal preference, I don’t like being restricted to a linear viewing of the portfolio. I prefer a drop-down menu to skip around.

There doesn’t seem to be a hierarchy for the projects. What specific talents do you want to highlight. It would be nice to see sections specifically about research/human factors/strategy/CAD/sketching/etc. Those will obviously overlap with the individual projects but I like to look at specific talents in addition to the overall projects.

Thanks. I created the grid background and played with the brightness of it for a while before settling on this level. Good to hear polarizing reactions to it.

I believe that I can have the projects organize themselves into different categories, like research/human factors/strategy/CAD/sketching/etc. by applying tags to each project, so that if someone wants to see just sketch-heavy projects they can pull them up.

Lots of the navigation stuff is “pre-packaged” in the WordPress application and theme, but a little bit of .css knowledge could fix that.

Thanks again for the comments.

Your work looks good. I especially like the helmet sketches.

One small thing that also could be fixed. (not sure if its just me) But to go to a project you much click on the actual title text. If you change that so that the complete square image was a link that would help a bit.

Yes, that bugs me too. I’d prefer the whole image was a big button. I’ll have to dig around to find it in the interface controls though.

If anyone is curious, I used a theme called ‘Widescreen’ from Graph Paper Press, running on WordPress. Quite a bit of trial and error went into building this thing, but it was pretty inexpensive, dollar-wise…

fantastic work of course, but my favorite part is the opening page, there is something about this that is really nice. I’d like to see that kind of elegance in the resot of the site… I’m thinking of revamping my own, so this is something on my mind of late…

Thanks Yo - I take it you are referring to the contrast between the big sketches and the relatively hard lines of the interface section. I’ll see what I can do with other backgrounds; perhaps a sketchy background instead of the hated grid would make for more ‘elegance’.

Thanks for checking it out.

Just revisited your website, probably you are working on it. I see your changes but now your text and pictures are too small to view. Oh! may be its the browser, I am using chrome.

Firefox and IE looks good though, jst chrome.

Nice stuff. I was just browsing and hadn’t noticed this post of yours. I remember your post a few years ago about the Kestrel/Orbea thing. Still bums me out…

shyamsun - thanks for checking it out in all the browsers - I don’t know why Chrome does that…

NURB - bums me out too - water under the bridge though.

I recently revamped my online portfolio, using a different WP theme from Graph Paper Press. GPP is pretty awesome by the way, if you don’t know too much about websites and .css and style sheets etc. because if you post a question, you get really responsive help and pointers from the GPP staff.

Its definitely an overview, rather than including exhaustive detail on every process. I’m debating whether to do all the projects as completely expository as possible, or just keeping them to 4-6 key images…leaning toward the latter, and working on the accompanying text a little better to tie the images and words.

Have a look, fire away.

Nice, I hadn’t seen that iota project before. Good stuff.

Sean… didn’t realize until now that your Alma Mater was Syracuse. Sure explains the intimate understanding of the “sense of lacrosse” (your process sketches); fierce-face is a big part of the game.

I don’t know if it was an intentional detail, but the occipital lock strap was reminiscent of the tassels we used to tie onto our helmets (last of the wood crosse/leather helmet crowd).

I’ve just completed version 3. Please have a look.

The intention for this site is to be a broad overview of completed work, not necessarily too much process sequences except where visually compelling.

I used the Prosite function of Behance, and was pleasantly surprised that it was FREE with an Adobe CC membership. Aside from a few inconsistencies with text and captions, this is a simple and customizable format for a design portfolio. I need to add more text to each of the projects, at least including captions under some of the photos to help understanding.

There will be more/older projects added when I get to it, and I’d like to add a section for sketches, either from the past or out-takes plus a sketch-a-day section.

(minimal also uses Prosite, and I admit to looking at how they did their site when assembling mine.) :blush: