Portfolio Review (Please!)

Hi everyone. I’ve revamped my portfolio to target it more in the direction of freelance clients. I’ve also included a lot more of my work and re-organized existing projects to be more brief. I still have a little ways to go, but I was hoping to get some feedback on what I have so far, especially the “Product Design” section. I’ve been waiting to send this to a few ID jobs until I completed this section.

If you guys were hiring, how does it stand up? What am I weakest in? Any suggestions on improving?

http://jordanpelovitz.com/#1

Thanks for looking!

[ Deleted ]

Hi Jordan,

I’m at work so I don’t have a ton of time to look at it right now.

In the couple minutes I spent on it, though, I thought the interface was kinda clunky.

You have a slideshow showing your different sets of skills (Product Design, Design Engineering, 3D printing, etc.) To get to Design Engineering, I need to click on Next or click on the thumbnail, and then click on the image itself to get to the DE section. And then to view each project/image you have in that section, it’s yet another slide show.

Here’s an example of something I think is more optimal: www3.nd.edu/~pfresh/ It’s a site I built back when I was learning HTML and CSS (not that I’ve improved much since), but I think it shows my point. Ideally, I like when I only have to click once or twice and then just scroll to see the rest of the project. Something like this would be nice: http://memikeserafin.com/110810/work. Although I understand that Mike Serafin’s site is built on top of Behance.

Edit:

So I’ve had more time to look the site and these are my last few thoughts.

Although your about page tells me you’re an IDer by training, you come across to me as an more of an engineer with some interest in design, from what you’re displaying and the kind of sketching you’re showing (which is above your typical engineer). I don’t exactly know what you’re going for, but if you want to come across as more of a designer, you might need a nicer interface and layout to the site.

As far as showcasing your work, I gotta agree with Keno. What’s really killing your site is the lack of flow. Compounded with the slideshow format, there’s not a clear division between projects, so I don’t know where one begins and one ends. A specific example of this weird choppiness is the lighting fixture, where you showed in the DE section, but also in the rendering section. Those should be clumped together, in my opinion. Also, you’ve got some pretty great models/renders of vehicles, so I’d blow those up and try to make them stand out more. They’re kinda hidden right now.

Lastly, in your Computer Graphics section. What do you mean by Pre-Rendered work? Aren’t those renders?

Hope this helps.

Thanks for the feedback guys, really useful. I’ll definitely work on the interface and the narration of the projects more.

As for the choppiness, I debated awhile for that. Since the portfolio is broken up by skills instead of projects, I put the renders under the computer graphics section - even if the fixture is under the engineering section. To break that would mean collating projects within the skills sections, which I thought might be confusing. I’m not sure what to do about your suggestion, ryip, but I’ve been thinking about it for awhile and will continue to do so.

Not sure what you mean by blow them up more…? As for the “pre-rendered” note, I use that to differentiate between real-time rendering (video games) and pre rendered (what a “render” is usually known as). The wording could probably be clearer.

Keno, were the problems you listed confined mainly to the Design Engineering section? What’s wrong with the Product Design section, in your opinion?

[ Deleted ]

Three most important things in any portfolio-

  1. Story (what’s the underlying message you are trying to communicate, who are you, what is your area of expertise?)
  2. Presentation. How clearly can you show your content.
  3. Content. Process. Skills. Experience.

To be honest, I’m not getting a good feel in any of these areas.

  1. Story. I also get some sort of engineering thing out of it. Not designer. I wouldn’t get past your first page if I was hiring for an IDer.
  2. Presentation. UI is hard to use, format is not attractive. Graphics are very weak.
  3. Content. I don’t see very much process, sketches look weak, and renderings not that impressive.

I would rethink your approach and desired message from the ground up.

Look into an off the shelf portfolio solution perhaps like Behance. It’s what I use (www.directivecollective.com). Easy, cheap, can customize a lot. Cleaning up the UI and presentation is an easy fix.

R

I won’t restart my entire page from scratch, considering how crucial parts of the current site are to my personal brand.

The truth is, at this point I’ve done more solid engineering work than I have design work. A lot of my design work has been wrapped up in entrepreneurship. That’s why, to me personally, the “Cargo/Observation Drone” project, is such a big deal - because it shows the end results of my two years of leadership and decision making process in attempting to define a newly existing market.

The Design Engineering stuff is a lot of “get a picture and usually a rough CAD sketch, make sure it works, fix it if it doesn’t, and produce an improved drawing” for. Interspersed with that is some part design work, where I take a part of the fixture, define it, and send it back overseas to get manufactured.

I think the biggest problem with my portfolio right now is that I haven’t finished the education section - I feel as if it’s the missing piece to the larger puzzle. I actually had planned on putting explanatory slides in each section like the one attached, but removed them because I felt as though people wouldn’t actually read through them. I’ll put them in next.

After that, I’m going to reread all prior comments and take them into account in producing the final section, Education, so that it becomes the standard for the rest. :slight_smile:

EDIT: Added the description page, gonna start going through everyone’s comments now and formulating a plan.

Bump

Updated with Teaching:

http://jordanpelovitz.com/?page_id=1457

I think I wanna be a teacher.

small tip, all that center justified text is difficult to read in blocks like that.