NEW "R-Folio" - The Directive Collective portfolio website

Hey All,

Just put together a brand-spankin-new portfolio website for my work and consultancy (The Directive Collective).

I’d appreciate any thoughts/comments on the format, content, copy, etc.

It’s live, but still doing some tweaking on the content - re-shuffling projects, editing images down (too many in some projects), adding some copy to describe projects, etc. Still, any ideas or bugs, please let me know.

Thanks,

R

PS. It’s built using Behance Prosite. Highly recommended. Lots of creative control, no coding and very pro looking results. My old site was a hacked together blogger template, which served it’s purpose, but got a bit unwieldy at some point and was very linear in the storytelling. I was looking at custom options, cargo-collective type stuff, but a bit over my head in technical points, and with Prosite you don’t even need hosting, plus updates are super easy.

You are showing great work, Richard but you already new that of course :wink:

My first impression of the site though is that it is way to busy for my liking.
Lots of different fonts sizes and kernings, logos, images… for me just too much information and impressions of the home screen, which cheapens the experience a bit. The menus do not seem grounded at all and appear to be floating a little here and a little there.

For example your logo but especially the wordmark appear too big, especially once you go deeper into the projects. I am already on your site, I don’t really need to be reminded of it on every page.
Personally, I’d stick with ether the DC logo or the wordmark, not both as it seems a bit redundant.

On a positive note, I enjoy that it is easy to browse your work and that organizing it by clients makes it easy to cherry pick whatever might be the most interesting for the viewer.

On first impression, I like your old site better. :slight_smile: That’s mostly to do with the new site not being centered, it only covers the left 2/3 of my screen. I also second the ‘floating’ comment of Bepster. It might be nice to have the columns of text on the left and right relate to each other. Lots of unused white space to the right of the first logo, seems a waste. And I feel you need a top menu bar or something, but that might just be expectation because it’s such a familiar element on other sites.

Looking forward to where you’ll go with it! And also huge respect for you and your body of work!

The text menu on the right side of Selected Work is the only thing that bothers me. It does seem misaligned with the left head side. Perhaps if it were different in some way, boxes or supers all thumbnails with text? Something to deliberately differentiate it.

That’s my only real complaint (which to be honest it was tough to find something to complain about). Site looks beautiful on a tablet, haven’t checked my phone yet.

Great work, as usual, Richard.

Thanks for the feedback. Some updates already made to address a few issues (site centered, left menu font color and rollover changed to differentiate from project list, “About” font matching others).

bepster- which fonts did you think had different sizes/kernings? They should all be the same size, and I think you mean leading, not kerning (no kerning, ie. letterspacing on digital web type), but they should be all the same there too.

I’m looking at combing the two logos so they are both up a the top. The reason I added the DC circle logo to the L menu was to differentiate it from the right menu (too much text menus otherwise), and also anchor the site to the L where the important info is. Two logos are important for my branding and also consistency as the wordmark logo is new, but the DC logo has elements from the previous logo so recoginzable. May look at reducing top logo size.

holtag- new site centered. had to dig in the settings to find it. My thought was to have the L and R text menus more different, than similar, hence the new color change. Noted space at top - may look at combining two logos to go up top or some other header content.

NURB - the right menu I’m not super happy with either. Also feel it’s a bit floating. Ideally I’d have it much further down where the projects are (below the large header), but I can’t do that, so it’s got to be up top. I just realigned it a bit with the header top, and changed color of left text. Better? Will see if I can do anything else to that menu.

Keep the comments coming. Any project thoughts welcome to once you dig in.

R

Yeah, I think I mixed up some type terminology there. I think I was just thrown by a lot of different text in different weights (?) maybe?

Anyway, so much better and tighter now, really like it.
Though it is a bit blog like… which is not a bad thing per se.

Site looks great!

I am about to redo my site also and have been researching pros/cons with Behance Prosite, SquareSpace, Cargo Collective and some of the Wordpress portfolio theme offerings.

Currently narrowed down to Prosite or Wordpress with a theme like Purity

MNML’s site is also done using Prosite for those interested in seeing another great portfolio presented with this platform

Liking the update! Your work has been popping up constantly for the last couple weeks on my Behance Activity feed from people I’m following appreciating it.

The only crit I have is that the gantt chart thumbnail for the “Design Management” portion feels really dull compared to all the other great thumbnails. I know it’s hard to make a gantt chart look sexy maybe swap it out for something that still conveys design management but is more visually interesting as a thumbnail.

Hey Matt,

Thanks for the comments. I’ll take a look at that gantt chart thumb, though I do kinda like how it’s so different than the others and yet still is graphic and colorful.

R

Very inspiring for a first year student - thanks for posting!

It’s been a long time coming, but I’ve finally rebuilt my website for The Directive Collective.

Working on some exciting new projects now so have finally made the transition to Squarespace. New content is on it’s way, just finished transitioning most of the previous content and tweaking the layout and template.

Overall it’s a similar vibe to the previous Prosite, but content and individual pages are better designed to feature different kind of content. Sections, Featured work and images on each page also streamlined to show just the best of the best.

I’m still working on adding new content, moving some of the old First Pullover blog content/resources into a new format (haven’t blogged in almost 10 years but still get a lot of referrals from the content), and adding new Directive Collective social media channels/content. Stay tuned!

Content, Layout, Design, Copy comments all welcome.


Thanks,

R

Nice Richard. Interesting, I’m seeing a lot of people move to this kind of tile based interaction where you get straight to projects. I recently re did mine as well and I was torn. I couldn’t get totally away from having more of a header then having more of a scroll style interaction, though I also got quickly to projects.

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Thanks for the replies.

Yo, did you look at it on desktop or mobile? The template I used I found seemed to work really well on both. I went with the tile format as I found it was the easiest to look good while constantly adding new content. The once over view at the home pages gives a good overview, and digging deeper has an easy flow. Adding a new row of tiles or shifting them around on the home page is super easy with Squarespare so I can mix stuff up or bring things to the top quickly,

Keno,

What do you mean about the PDFs as content pages? The Studio & Services Guide is a PDF for download but is also shown as a grid below on the page. The overall content of the whole site (and copy) is actually based on that PDF + more (ie. pages on the PDF for graphics, a graphics page, etc.). I think pretty much every image on the PDF is included someplace.

Mobile vs. Desktop a huge consideration for sure. Squarespace makes the formatting automatically platform agnostic.

R

PR. Stay tuned for more miix :wink:

Richard, I looked at it on desktop… so old school :slight_smile:

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I’ll fax you a dot matrix print out. :laughing:

R

Ah, OK. Points clearer now.

I’ll work on that. Agree 100% the “Download” on the tile is a bit confusing. Was meaning to indicate there is a download available inside… I can reword.

On the tile content of the Services Guide, you can actually click on each page to bring it up larger for viewing (also on mobile). Thinking was the tiles on that content page was sorta a preview before you decide you want to download. I may try a different type of gallery instead of the tile such as larger vertical column of images like other pages or a carousel of images. I went away from that as I believe the PDF content is best read as a full screen PDF, and even as a large image on a page, it’s not ideal, so better to just show what is the content, then lead to the PDF link.

As said, nothing is really ONLY in the PDF that isn’t elsewhere so either you get the PDF and that’s all you need or you explore the sight. Not really a fan of the “Portfolio” name, hence the “Studio and Services Guide” title.

What do you mean exactly by " It seems there is more when there it was all the time on the landing page tiles, so this could be confusing." ?

FAQ PDFs I agree could be page contents. Haven’t gotten around to that so the FAQ page a downloads of existing PDFs was the quick fix.

Fonts until tiles (and font color) I’m still playing with. My thought was the image is what catches your mind, the title being less important, but more prominent could be good if you are looking for a specific service or content…

R

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Check it out now. Addressed some of the PDF content concerns and main page font sizes…

R