Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Screen Designs for Portfolio Site

I have just completed my first screen designs for my portfolio website, and I'd appreciate some feedback on them. I've kept a separate identity for this to the one I have been using a lot recently. The slides of the images you can see on the interior page would open up when hovered over (like on my current Notfree site, just because I believe it is an easy way to view work)

I've gone for a very clean and simple design style, primarily to let the design work talk for itself. Up until very recently I was going to go the complete opposite way, but after spending a large amount of time over the last couple of weeks looking at design portfolios I am now of the complete opposite opinion. Anyway, here they are:

Homepage design


Interior page (sorry there isn't much example text on there)

Please note: I have left off all the colour notation and sizes purely because I think it easier for people to just see the design. If anybody wishes to see this version please do not hesitate to ask.

6 comments:

Scott Dunwoodie said...

I like what you have done with the clean and simple design style and your use of a serif font, gives an "arty" feel to the site.

But I don't like the "drop down" image viewer you have used on your notfree site and I believe you used it on Monkey Business?

It seems a bit jumpy to me, and it requires the user to remain in a hover over a certain place. This then limits them in browsing the rest of the site. I would much rather see the images.

Of course this is just my opinion.

Julian Dyer said...

I also agree that the image viewer is fiddly to use. Trying to use it in a window size of 1024x768 is very jumpy. It's a clever idea, but it is fiddly to use and not intuitive.

Maybe you could try creating some interesting thumbs, and opening them with a customized Lightbox? Just an idea.

I do like the clean look, I think I may root out some of the lines on my design to make it look a bit less hemmed in.

How is the character length of the description text? It may be a little long for extended reading. Have you though about a bigger margin on the right? Maybe have the text going 3/4s of the way across? Again, just an idea.

Craig Burgess said...

Scott / Julian: I appreciate your comments about the image viewer being difficult to use, and I am very open to better ways to display images. I picked the image viewer primarily because it saves so much room, but I can see why people may think it is a bit fiddly.

Julian, I really want to avoid Lightbox, but it can't be denied that it fits its purpose. I may look into other similar options and customising lightbox, and I think thumbnails might be a good idea.

The character length is at the long end of what is acceptable, but I don't think this will be an issue. I am not planning on addding much text so I should be OK. I might bump up the font size a little bit. Cheers for the comments.

Chris Towell said...

I must agree with Scott and Julian, however simple it is and compact the image viewer definitely causes some problems.

I think I'm viewing it on a smaller resolution monitor (1024x768) and the one on your not free site was a bit difficult to view the image properly.

It is a good idea though and it would work, how about making the image smaller?

As for the fonts I like the serif font, but are the links going to be underlined? Or is that just to show they are links? and have you altered the tracking? the letters seem a little too close together on the Pete Namlook text.

I do think the line length for the text is a bit long and you may also need to proof read, even if it is just a screen design.

Richard said...

I like the way you show your images, the way they get bigger makes me think I am interacting more with the site in some way. But I would say it is maybe a little too big when it jumps to fill the whole screen in some cases(especially on my laptop).

Like Scott says the images viewed like this could limit the way a user interacts with the site but couldn’t this also be said for Lightbox?

I also like the clean look of the site and it does look like a blank canvas for your work.

Craig Burgess said...

Thanks Rich. I think I'm going to investigate the image viewer issue a bit further. I think if the images were a bit smaller like Scott suggested then it may work better, but I am still going to remain open to better solutions to display my work.

I'm desperately trying to avoid using Lightbox, slightly because it's Javascript and I want to make sure people can use my site if they don't have it.