Buehler? Buehler? Fry? Fry?

no love, huh? Is it something I said?

While it's not distinctly different from some designer sites I've seen before, it does a good job of displaying your portfolio. My only recommendation is to reduce the space between your category headers (i.e., Flyers) and the actual blog entry. Too much vertical white space, in my opinion.

I'm not a code monkey, so props for being able to manipulate any of that.

Other than that, cool.

Cool, thanks for the suggestions. My goal was to really simplify the 'style' of the site so that the focus was more on the functionality and work/content. I tried to incorporate some originality with the changing header and stuff like that...

thanks again!

Perhaps you could consider putting your logo on the left side of your header, you would need something on the right to balance out the design, but it would be putting one of your main focal point where people will begin reading the page.

Also, for some reason I can't quite put my finger on, the logo just doesn't feel right in it's current spot. Maybe it's because it's not aligned with the gray bar, or maybe it's just a personal pet peeve.

-Fairth

I know what you mean. How about something like this (attached)? I would have to move up the content to lessen the v-whitespace, but you get the idea.

What do you think?

Much better, the logo feels right now. Good job.

-Fairth

sooo... I took the few comments that I got here to heart and applied them to my site. THanks again, Fairth and Jack for your feedback. Here is the revised website: http://bpdesignlab.com/blogbeta/.

(looking at the new version)

12px is an OK font size for Verdana but with Lucida Sans Unicode it can be pretty hard to read. Nice to look at, hard to read.

The space under the navigation is wasted. This is where most people are going to look. I would trim down the tagline on the logo and move the body copy up at least 100px. It looks like I'm using adblock and it's blocked a banner ad in that space.

I also think the site would look better centered than left aligned. It gets kind of wonky on a widescreen.

I think your portfolio needs more content. No link to the website, no description of what your role in the project was, and the screenshots are pretty small.

I'm not too keen on the color changes in the navigation. I also can't really figure out what motivates them.

I agree with vanish it's hard to read.
And I also don't like the colour changes on nav. This is the most important part of people navigating it should not change!

I hadn't noticed the color changes before, but now I agree. A consistent color scheme is very important. In the black version, I think that you need to leave the text inside the logo white. Concerning the logo text that's outside of the graphic, I realize that you're trying to emphasize "designer", but I don't think that you should use a different color (or value in the case of the black one); perhaps some other method such as enlarging it would help (simply leaving it as the last one works fine too, people tend to remember the last thing they read the most). I would also advise making it where the afore mentioned text has: 1. No punctuation. 2. All periods. Or. 3. All commas with the exception of the last one having a period.
Something to think about, when deciding on what color to go with, think about the feel you want to give. Blues tend to be the most calming. Greens are calming, but with an air of life, growth, and energy. Reds, oranges, yellows, and the like, more often give a high-energy, and fast-paced feel. Black and white come across as uptight, and professional (sometimes too much so), think of a tuxedo.

In your favor though, I would like to say that the white space doesn't bother me that much (keep in mind that I'm only a student of design, and could be wrong). Think about the most obvious options: If you push the head-area down so that the logo is beside the body, you risk pulling attention away from the logo. The other is to add an image or some sort of banner; an image would add interest to the page, but would distract from the logo (though in a better way than the other option would).

Don't get me wrong, doing something like that and working out the problems it creates might be worth it, but if you're not happy with the changes, you've got something to fall back on.

Sorry for being so wordy.
-Fairth

I like the black verion of your logo much more than the one on your website, problem solver.

Thanks...

...everyone for the feedback. I will consider all of your comments while revising.

If the consensus is that the site is hard to read, then I definitely need to address this, probably first and foremost. Also, I think I definitely need to change the punctuation. There was a also good point about not needing the color to be different on 'designer.'

As for the color/changing header. I'll have to mull this one over a little bit more. My original color scheme for the website was the blue, which I was fairly happy with; however, it didn't seem to completely encompass my desired identity. I also liked Black & white; however, as someone said it was way too formal (hence the addition of CMY). That is why I chose the rotating colors to represent the many facets/aspects of the work that I do and (hopefully) create a more comprehensive identity package. But maybe it's too confusing/distracting... hmmm.

I'll also need to address the issue of more information on the portfolio part. Currently, the thumbs are pulled in off of an RSS from my SmugMug account, which then uses Javascript for the lightboxes (It automatically makes any comment text into a link to the image - silly!). This makes it really easy to update the pieces in the portfolio sections, which is important; however, it unfortunately limits the ability to customize because of my lack of expertise in js. I guess I'll have to look into other ways and/or mess with the js to see if I can make it more informative and user-friendly...