Portfolio Review

[Jimmy!]

Afternoon gents,

I?ve been going to school, part time, the last four years to get my degree in graphic design. It?s been challenging balancing family, a 40-hour work week, and school, but it will all come to an end in a few short months.

One graduation requirement is to create a portfolio website showcasing some of the work I?ve done (in school and out). If any of you have the time, I?d love it if you looked at my portfolio site and let me know if there?s anything I can do to improve it. Major overhauls, minor tweaks, I?ll take all constructive criticism. The url is jimwornell.com.

Thanks,

--Jim

[DG_ThenNowForever]

You designed the Brain Age package art? Incredible.

My only critique is that it's annoying to do "Channel Up" and "Channel Down" to look through the images, and then click "Close" to move on. It'd be easier if clicking the image just brought up the next one. It's less of a cool-looking interface that way, but a bit more functional. Call me lazy, but I try moving my mouse as little as possible.

Otherwise, an awesome website. It looks very cool.

[DDR]

You've got some great work on there. In terms of tweaks for you to make...I'll just be picky about personal preferences to give you practice at hearing ludicrous feedback from people. On the splash page, I spent a few seconds looking for more to click on around the house and stuff, beyond the Enter Door. It seems like there should be more clickable spots but there's not. Then, on the main page, the background photo looks blurry to me. I'm sure it's meant to, but to some people it might look like the image was poorly resized. And, to kinda echo what gitlin said, perhaps you could leave the "close" spot in the corner, but also have the enlarged image automatically close if you click it again. Click to close. That way you could conceivably stay in the same spot (the channel up spot) and not have to go back and forth. Not that it's really that big of a deal as it is. And, like I said, the work (the most important part) is pretty cool. Nice job.

[Jimmy!]

Picky is juuuust fine with me.

The main page was a struggle for me. I was trying to be subtle, but maybe the door is too subtle? Aside from adding "click door to enter," any advice on fixing that?

I see what you mean about the "click to close" feature. I'll go back and mess around with that.

[gingerbreadmann]

I agree about the door. I actually went to the site when you posted it but I thought it was just a house and I couldn't figure out how to get in. I was literally about to post, "I just see a house," but thought better of it. I just finally found the door my second time trying. I think you should bot a "Welcome" sign above the door, beside the door, or below it. Something a little more obvious. Other than that, so far, it is designed pretty well and you have some nice stuff on there.

EDIT: Also, on the main page, the radio or whatever the "contact" button thing is should be in focus as well. Maybe take the picture again with everything in focus then blur the background with Photoshop. Also, if you don't have it on the house page, I don't think you should have the dedicated links on the upper left of pages. Don't make them as subtle, but make it some interactive object in the picture. Know what I mean?

I like the remote but maybe make some buttons/knobs on the TV work as well. It may feel a bit more natural to click the buttons right next to the images and(as a righty I guess) not have to "reach across" the image to click the remote. Or, just put the remote on the other side of the tv, and maybe enlarge the TV. Or, I may be crazy.

However, the website has a nice feel to it. I like it.

[pcgd]

Nice sight and impressive set of work. Not only in quality but quality of clients.

Although it seemed to load quickly, I'm not a huge fan of using large images, especially for html. It looks good, just make sure you test it on multiple browsers, because in my experience, sometimes those images get all screwy in different browsers. But I worked around web programmers for a year that brainwashed me into thinking that most images need to be under 1k. (I'm exaggerating)

All in all nice work and I don't think many potential jobs would turn you away based on your work or webpage.

[andrewharrington]

Then, on the main page, the background photo looks blurry to me. I'm sure it's meant to, but to some people it might look like the image was poorly resized.

That's a little phenomenon called the 'depth of field' meaning that the eye (or lens) can not sharply focus everything in view because of the objects being located different distances from the eye or lens. Notice how the foreground (t.v. tray) is in prefect focus.

[Jimmy!]

Thank you for the feedback so far. I've updated the site with some minor changes that will hopefully help.

I should have probably said at the beginning that I just started taking Dreamweaver this quarter and my knowledge of Flash wouldn't fill half a shot glass. (If anyone has suggested reading materials on either program, I'd love to hear about it. They're very addictive programs.) I guess that's why the site was built the way it was. Larger images, simpler interface/navigation, etc.

And yes, git, I designed the Brain Age package, along with a bunch of other games.

Keep the comments coming.