First time I’ve put up a website, as well as putting together a portfolio for design work. I’d be greatful for any and all suggestions/ tips/ and or comments.
Having previewed other’s suggestions, comments regarding ease of navigation, range of work, lack or too much of certain content would be awsome!
I’m teetering between showing more process (ie all the rough sketches) because it looks odd/ extremly rough next to final models/ renderings. Would you recommend a seperate ‘Sketches’ section? (in which case I feel the sketches would not be somewhat disassociated with it’s correspond project) help?
You are a student at Carleton ID, right?..my guess based on the familiar mass pro, and atudio projects (i graduated from there 5 years ago, and the projects were the same then!).
The projects look OK, content-wise, but I do find the navigation a bit difficult. Its not too clear to me to click the thumbnails on the proejct pages, and the Next link is a little awkward.
Regarding the content, I would also suggest more process. The foam models are good to show, but you should also have lots of sketches, etc. As you dont have too much experience yet, or too many projects to show (thats OK for someone aat your level- first/second year?), go into more depth with each project. Don’t be afraid to show rough sketching and your thought process. At this stage, the most important thing is showing HOW you think, not necessarily the final outcome. Even if the final model/design isn’t 100% complete or as finished as a longer project, you can show your thought process and design process which is very important.
As well, be sure to put you contact details/CV on your site! If you direct a potential employer or someone interested in you to the site, they should know how to contact you (phone/email, etc.), and something about your background/experience.
Thanks for the feedback R. Its neat how alumni can recal similar projects the’ve completed years ago… perhaps Carleton needs to update their assigned projects, either that or they’ve found some sort of magic combination (i’m hoping for a touch of truth in the later) …
I’ll definatly look into improving the navigation; hearing that you didn’t see the profile & contact sections goes to show that those links were obviously not aparant enough! (those four colored squareish things in top right corner ?..) although I was hoping to keep things visually unobtrusive, I suppose subtle icons of sorts would help there.
i think Carleton has had the same projects for something like 15 years! Black and Decker in 3rd year, etc.
The projects are OK, but I would also think a lot of the program could be updated. Still too much focus on rendering and old school stuff like hand drafting, mass pro metal work, etc. At least what I think from my experience there and what I’ve seen come out of the school in recent years.
Keep up the good work on the portfolio. I would suggest making your contact details appear on every page, and then you could have an additional liek for background/CV. That way if someone prints a page from your site of your work, your contact into will be sure to be there. Also be suer to prominently feature your contact info/name on the main page. Someone checking out your stuff should have an instant imprssion of who/where you are. Maybe start with the background stuff and contact info, also so someone gets an idea of what level of work they are looking at. This way they can better judge if they are looking a professional with lots of experience, or a student. Helps appropriately judge your work.
You have a lot of material in your site, and while I agree with moderator that it’s nice you didnt bog the intro down with flash, navigating through the site to see all your projects is really time consuming. I would consider reworking the navigation to something that is much more intuitive to use. I had no idea that those squares functioned as links until I read that somewhere in a previous post. Also, instead of indexing the projects on a seperate page, maybe just make them a sub-menu within the catagory you are in (ex. if you’re in product design, maybe have a pop up sub menu that indexes the projects for that catagory). Having to go to a seperate index page for the different catagories is…again…time consuming. I would think as an employer, one would want to see the projects as quickly as possible, without having to go through too many layers of menus to do so.
Also, maybe try to find some script that changes the scroll bars to something a little more stylized (your generic/standard grey scroll bars that show up next to the project thumbnails and in the project index page is kind of tacky)
Thanks for your suggestions Richard and Joe, I’m glad you brought up how you felt the navigation was time consuming, and your point about a sub-menu sounds like a great solution. I’m tweeking with the arrangment of info right now and seeing where and how Ican squeeze that in somewhere. The links on the top will be made much more intuitive, and contact details that remain constant throughout the pages are all things I’m going to be adding in very soon (in between studying for exams…fun times!).
I’ve been trying to figure out a more elegant solution to the generic scroll bars, but not being a very experience flash user… (or web designer for that matter) I had opted for using those default ones… any one have suggestions or links to good websites that offer tutorials perhaps or even scripts for such things?
Re: things being time consuming: what are people’s thoughts about the amount of text there is. I suppose if empoyers are simply browsing through, then they won’t bother reading much, and I could be using that space to display more and or larger pics. But then again I would imagine such information is important to understand the scope/ and aim of the projects?
Took several suggestions to heart, and have come up with an updated version…
Project Index Page will still be tweeked to get rid of the generic slider… till then
stil, I would put your contact and profile info together on one page and make it very clearly linked from all pages.
also, i still find the small thumbnail image links on each page to see different pics of the projects a little hard to use/know about.
overall i think the issue is just that there are too many kinds of interfaces. some images at the bottom right, colored square at the bottom left, next/fw text links, colored squares top right… not very consistent. it would help if maybe they were all grouped together to a naviagtion section, or they were more consistent. getting an overall feel of the site plan is a little tricky from what you have knowing which interface to use to go where i want…
Regarding the actual projects themselves, i think you have some good stuff, but would also suggest again to include more process stuff…sketches, etc. to show your thinking. much more important in my opinion than a finished model. think of it this way…in 5 years itis very unlikely that your final deign/model will still be in your portfolio, but your thought process is always still relevant so more important to show who you are.
keep you the good stuff!..and great to see you asking for feedback and actually taking it and making some changes. too often here on core i see people ask, then get so defensive and dont want to change anything! not very productive!
Hmmm, looks good, but I would relook your thumbnails. The croppings dont look very exciting. The idea, i think of thumbnails are small interesting images of details of your product, of which someone will click and get the “bigger” picture.
?..) although I was hoping to keep things visually unobtrusive, I suppose subtle icons of sorts would help there.