This is a portfolio to hopefully try and get me a job / part-time or placement with a web design agency (and also maybe attract clients). What do you think. Positive criticism please!

 

http://www.calumbrodie.co.uk/

 

I know it is quite heavy on images but let me know how the performance (download speed) is for you and if all the various pop ups and what not work. Excuse the voice on the screencast, I'm not usually so prosaic, but it was late at night!

 

Thanks

I rather like it - simple design. Not to keen on the link in the main text with orange behind it.

The pop-ups all work ok for me. The paintbrush seems miss-aligned too, but not sure if it is ment to look like that. The colours are a good choice.

 

Downloaded fast enough for me.

I rather like it - simple design. Not to keen on the link in the main text with orange behind it.

The pop-ups all work ok for me. The paintbrush seems miss-aligned too, but not sure if it is ment to look like that. The colours are a good choice.

 

Downloaded fast enough for me.

 

Yeah I agree about the in text link, I might soften the background color and then use a dark color for that instead. The paint brush is meant to look like that (the icon is from the original mac paint, but I'm kind of scared of a hoarde of apple lawyers descending down on me so I might change that) It's meant to look like the line has been painted by the brush.

 

Thanks for the comment.

Hi Calum

You've obviously worked really hard on this site, and it shows. It has a lot of personality and visual interest. One thing I would change if it were mine is the font for the main content. I don't think italics are a good idea for this, and they're quite hard to read.

Definitely change the text link style too.

The other thing to think about, is who is your site aimed at? Will your customers understand the logos you've included on the left for photoshop, illustrator, joomla, etc etc, and will they really care? Similarly, you list all these technologies in your copy, but don't actually say about what they mean. Your potential clients will not likely know what textmate is for example. I think you should talk about what you can actually do: ie produce functional, effective, clean web pages using the latest and best technologies.

I think it looks wonderful! You've done a great job.

 

Will your customers understand the logos you've included on the left for photoshop, illustrator, joomla, etc etc, and will they really care?

I agree; I actually found myself hovering the images to see if they had a title.

Thanks alot guys exactly the kind of input I'm after. I havn't used italics for my main font, but I have used a serif font at a small size and appreciate why this is bad, practice. I'll change it to geneva, verdana, sans-serif.

 

I take your point regarding the skills section too, I will have to have a think about that and make a few changes. I'm not adverse to including navigation and bulking the whole thing up a bit but the idea in the beginning was to keep the page as simple as possible (like the way I design my sites). I guess part of my problem is I dont really know exactly who this is aimed at (potential clients with no knowledge of web design or a small web design studio looking for a new employee) But I'll have to have a think about that and make it a bit clearer.

 

Regarding the text link style do you have any ideas for color? It is hard with the blue background to find a color that stands out, is readable and still screams LINK (and I do like underlining links, I'm not into dotted lines or any of that stuff, I think it confuses people) I might even have to redesign the whole of the top area.

 

This is very much a work in progress, so thanks again for the pointers.

 

Regards

I like it a lot.

I think it looks wonderful! You've done a great job.

I agree; I actually found myself hovering the images to see if they had a title.

 

 

Same here.

OK so a couple of people have mentioned that they mouseovered the icons in the top left. Should I ditch them or should I add tooltips Instead?

 

@MolotovRuss

 

Just checked your portfolio, It's nice. We have similar aesthetic sensibilities i think.

Yeah looks great. only thing I would change is the colours apart from the bg colour.

You mean the orange then?

That is looking so much nice IMO with the font changed. As for the link colour, I'm still not sure- have you tried that nice lime green from the graphic above the footer?

Looks Great, nice choice of colors, clean layout, only thing is it's XHTML doesn't validate(4 errors)...

 

I just added some meta tags about 5 minutes ago and forgot to close one of them, 1 forward slash missed == 4 validation errors!

 

 

After all my ranting on the other thread about validation as well

 

 

@notbanksy

 

Thanks for the lime green tip. I'm going to work on V2 over the next week or so, work on the copy and maybe add a bit of navigation (I think it's a bit cheeky to advertise yourself as a web designer without a navigation bar to be seen anywhere!) and a few other bits and pieces. Thanks for all the feedback.

Lol, no problem man! No biggie.

There, validates now! Nicely done! Great website Calum!

OK I did a bit of a rerig, moved some elements about and added a few subtle textures, but now I have this weird problem. the center section of the site uses a 960px wide jpg which has a gradient at the side so that it blends into the page background colour. On Firefox this looks fine, (attached picture one) but on Safari 3, due to the way the colour of the jpg is being rendered the gradient doesn't work and the join is apparent. Does anyone know why this would be happening. It's as if Safari is rendering the picture 'brighter' than it should. Never came across this one before..

Er... Anyone? You can compare the new iteration ( http://www.calumbrodie.co.uk ) with the old one (the old one is on http://www.calumbrodie.co.uk/oldsite) Do you think the newer one is an improvement? And any ideas on the safari weirdness? Thanks.

Think the new one looks a lot better. Those radiation lines are really starting to become popular Just not so shure about the 2 column layout. gives it a bit of a flimsy look like there no actual body. Nothing stands out as being the main content area.

 

Small question. Why use googlemail when you have your own domain?

Think the new one looks a lot better. Those radiation lines are really starting to become popular Just not so shure about the 2 column layout. gives it a bit of a flimsy look like there no actual body. Nothing stands out as being the main content area.

 

Small question. Why use googlemail when you have your own domain?

 

 

Yeah about 2 years ago! But I'm not too bothered by trends I suppose. The only reason I went for 2 colums with 2 section in each (opposed to one wider column with 4 sections) was that some sections are quite light on copy and would have looked a bit daft (ie heading, 1 line of text, another heading, 2 lines of text......) But I take your point and will experiment. The main reason for the webmail is that I hadn't really investigated it. Also my domain is registered at 123 reg and the hosting is elsewhere, does that mean I can still use my domain for mail? Further I like webmail for the ease of access (I can use it on my ipod or when at someone elses computer) How hard is it to redirect to an IMAP account from a POP3? Thanks for the feedback.

Hi matey, i like the progress you have made hear, and you design look fab! I really like that orange in the old design though, have you tried experimenting with it in the new design but not using it as heavily? Also the link text is a little hard on the eyes atm.

Arghhh! That f***ing link text! It's the bane, have tried various thing with it but still no joy, I'll go back to the drawing board on that. Haven't tried the orange with the new design, but can't really think where it will fit in (not as link text, I've tried that!)... Anyway Ill go back and do a bit more tweaking (Do you think I need to bring the icons back in, I did like them although a few people commented that they were confusing). Thanks for the feedback!