my turn...

[acousticmind]

K, so I'm a little blasé and jaded about my portfolio site. Here is the link:

http://www.sebmouttet.com

Now.. I wanted the simple approach, so that the design of the site would not take away from the work that I'm showcasing, in that respect I find that it works; what I'm a concerned with is compatibility issues between browsers, the look of the site (does it work??) and the content. A lot of the work that is on there is student work. What should I remove? Also, I currently work as an editorial designer at an oil and gas magazine... Do you think many spreads showcased would be appropriate in comparison to the current hierarchy that I've developed?

And here's the big question: If you were sent to look at this site as a potential employer; would you dismiss it quickly or would you be interested in contacting me? (And I know this is really subjective; so... be ruthless if you need to, trust me, I can take it)

[cnic]

And here's the big question: If you were sent to look at this site as a potential employer; would you dismiss it quickly or would you be interested in contacting me? (And I know this is really subjective; so... be ruthless if you need to, trust me, I can take it)

I'm glad you asked that. I think that is a very appropriate question.

That super simple style is good to a degree... so long as it is not boring.

Blue hyperlinks, regular old text just floating on white space.... boring in this case. But thats just my opinion.

I actually clicked on contact... and then closed the browser window before even looking at the work. I went back and looked at the art now, and judging by the quality of your work... you can do better here.

Good start... good luck.

.

[frankster]

If I was looking through a lot of potencial employee's work then I'd rather see something like you have, where you can navigate easily and see how much work is on the site and see each piece without background clutter interfering. As memorable visually as some of the fancy ass flash portfolios can be, a lot of them are also memorable for being navigational nightmares and limiting your impact to being predominantly the style of the site, not the varied styles of the work in it.

Your site loads quickly and I get to see your work and nothing but your work and I like that. Unless you have a very specific style that runs through all of your work then you're going to have trouble picking a suitable "frame" to display it in. I think that is why I prefer no frame at all.

I think another reason that I like simplicity like you have is that it's very unassuming. I see a lot of designer portfolios that limit their appeal through being overwhealmingly styled to one market. When you have something simple then it's like saying "my design work depends on what will work best for your project, and won't be tainted by what genre of design I personally like best." No one is going to be able to make a snap judgement about you and will have to base their opinion on your work alone.

Of course there are some people that trade on their particular strong style and having a website that reflects that predominant style is great in that situation, but it seems that your work is varied.

N.B. I do not recruit designers, so I'd be interested to see if someone that does will come and chip in to the thread.

[Randomhero]

Simply is always good, but in your case you went way overboard with simple to the point of boring. There doesn't seem to be any organization to it. Also idk if it's just my computer but all the text is way over to the right leaving a LOT of blank space that should be filled with.... something, even if it's just color.

Here is an awesome example of simplicity to the max while also looking very professional.

http://sushiran.com/food.html

You should really do something more than just text on the page.

[Typically]

i am a lover of white space and there is plenty of it here =]

i really like how it loads quickly. that makes looking at the work very easy and doesn't leave you board and leaving because stuff is still loading.

what i don't like is how everything is right aligned. it's not so bad that i wouldn't look at it but it just confuses me. maybe try doing the links a different color than blue since the blue is the default link color it looks like it's wasn't really thought about much.

but i like it man and you have some nice work. a little more tweaking and you should be good to go.

[RistoL.]

Why can't you click the text that tells you to click everything? ;)

Other than that, I'm all for the simplistic style. Just be sure to really place every bit with proper thought, not just throw it in there, have to be careful with balancing and positioning everything just right.

[steve2112]

i hate pop up windows and prefer hover and and enlarge pictures. I mean i really hate pop ups and some people have them completely disabled.

i hate pop ups

steve

[acousticmind]

Allrite I'm diggin it so far..

I was inspired for the look by all those indexhibit portfolios that you run across all the time. The reason that I right-aligned everything was to have a site that was simple like those indexhibit ones but yet, differentiate myself from the crowd.

My problem is that I only know basic HTML, that's about it... (and yes, I know how to use Dreamweaver). I'm actually pretty impressed with myself that I was able to get everything right-aligned in the first place.

@ Risto: jack-ass ;)

@ Randomhero: yeah that's what I was afraid of... that it would be... boring (in other words... click click click, minimize window, forget all about it)

[Kool]

As someone who used to hire designers I really like it. I want simple, I want to get in, see if you can design and get on to the next portfolio. I think portfolios designed for potential clients need to be entertaining. portfolios designed for potential employers need to be quick and dirty.

I do agree that changing the link colors would be an improvement.

[Navian]

I see that the heading (project title) and description text gets covered up by some of the images, and I also noticed that the sound levels on the videos (Happy holiday) are really loud, and I couldn't turn them down, I had to pull my headphones out of my ears.

Maybe more information/description on each piece (I saw one quickly before it got covered up, describing what software you used, and what the project was for).

[budafist]

You have some really good work and I can't help but feel that the website is way under designed. Just a tiny bit more personality would be nice. It is easy to go overboard though and I feel like more often than not, a website portfolio is over designed and doesn't allow the work to speak for itself.

[*the girl* ryan]

seriously....
i want one of those 'quit plastic' bags.

i am trying to be more conscious about that kinda stuff and I really like the simplicity of your design.

[budafist]

seriously....
i want one of those 'quit plastic' bags.

i am trying to be more conscious about that kinda stuff and I really like the simplicity of your design.

Hey! I wanted one too. But they don't really exist. Yet.

Sounds like you might be onto a winner there though. Maybe you should make a few for real?

[acousticmind]

thanks for all the feedback everyone, I really appreciate it.. I'm gonna see what I can do to improve it in the next little while...

About the quit plastic bags...

yeah.. I've thought about marketing them... but hell... where to start??!!! :)

[Mr_LeE]

Simply is always good, but in your case you went way overboard with simple to the point of boring.

Abit harsh but true..

I agree with him.


i hate pop ups

steve

I also agree with my friend steve here. Not a fan of pop ups.

[Bladez]

dude....I can't believe you put your Scat Artist video on there....

[acousticmind]

dude....I can't believe you put your Scat Artist video on there....

I love showing off my bum... what can I say?

[Typically]

dude that was pretty funny! it loads painfully slow though

[dwagener]

I graduated college 2 years ago and I've seen a fair amount of other student websites and first of all I think yours is different (in a good way)... So many of them have flourishes or attempt the latest design trend in them and a quote by Paul Rand (not that Paul Rand's quotes aren't good) but they all seemed alike. I think that yours shows personality. Usually I would say an online portfolio is pretty much another portfolio piece in itself, so give it a nice design... Simple is always better and at first I thought yours was maybe too plain, but as I was looking at the work I didn't mind it, because I really did only focus on the work. When I look at someone's online portfolio, I almost always look at, at least 2-3 portfolio pieces even if I don't like their site design. If all of those first 3 are terrible then I close. I like some of your work a lot. I'm diggin the vox poster a lot, I liked the newt book and quit plastic bags too. You should be fine, good luck!

Dan

[flutterby nut]

i think the right alignment would be ok, but the big blank space in the upper left strikes me as odd...maybe stretch out 'do not hesitate...' to fill it?...

speaking of which, you say 'do not hesitate to click' and then 'in fact, please do'...soooo, you want me to hesitate to click? ;)

have you considered listing your links, rather than running them all together?

[acousticmind]

hadn't thought of that... is it really that ambiguous? The do not hesitate... in fact, please do?

i dunno my first language is french.. so u know
those damned french

[flutterby nut]

oooh, far be it from me to damn the french! :D

maybe just drop the 'do not hesitate...' and say 'please click', or something to that effect...

[tZ]

As long as your not looking for a job as a web designer I'd say its fine. If your looking for work on the web though not so much. The two things that bother me the most would be the frames and text as images. Both a big no no without image replacement. The other thing that bothers me is that your images show up broken at first than within a few seconds show up unbroken. This isn't a normal behavior. The "simplistic" nature of the site would come off a whole lot better with proper mark-up,css and using text rather than images or image replacement. Its ok for what its meant to accomplish but really it needs some css and html love if your marketing on the web side.

[acousticmind]

thanks a lot for the advice, guys. again, I really appreciate it..

I get the feeling i need to get back to school for a couple web courses hehe :o

[morea]

I don't hire designers, so take this with a grain of salt.

I like the simplicity of the site design and think that your work is very nice. A few observations, which may just amount to personal preference:

- I find the large text on the page a bit too large, and somewhat distracting. I'd like to see a bit more white space between the text and the work being showcased.

- You might consider resizing the images so that they are the same width from one piece to the next. On a related note, in the "east 10" piece there are two images side by side and the one on the right is extends beyond the top and bottom of the one on the left. To me, it doesn't really look intentional and might be more appealing if those images were the same size. (Also, I could very well have OCD.) ;)

- A personal quirk, perhaps, but I like to be warned before clicking on a link to a video clip. Perhaps those could be separated so that you have the stationary images in one list and a separate list for video clips? I have limited bandwidth so I like to know what I am clicking before I click it. (It is still noteworthy at this point that I may have OCD.)

Overall I like it, and I think that the straightforward nature of the site would appeal to a potential employer, though I do agree that it might be nice to add a touch of color.

Hope that helps some! :)

[Two-Toe Tom]

hey, your portfolio images goes over the text in IE7

[acousticmind]

hey, your portfolio images goes over the text in IE7

I KNOW! And well, I have NO idea how to fix it... works fine in safari, firefox and the likes but *crap* I'm just not experienced enuf with web to know HTF to fix it

[acousticmind]

Hope that helps some! :)

certainly does; as do all the comments so far.! :rolleyes:

[Two-Toe Tom]

I KNOW! And well, I have NO idea how to fix it... works fine in safari, firefox and the likes but *crap* I'm just not experienced enuf with web to know HTF to fix it

hmm, well you've got a </p> in there that might be screwing things up, try removing that.

[Bladez]

hit up the web section of the forum and ask for coding help in there. Also, if you're interested, I've got books on Javascript and such I can bring you. Let me know if you wanna borrow 'em