If anyone has the time to give a couple of comments about my work it would be MUCH appreciated. My fellow designer friends are too nice to give constructive critcism - so please be honest.
Just to give a bit of context : I’m a junior designer with 2 and a half years experience
looking to get a new role in a branding agency - it’s proving tough and I have a feeling either/both my portfolio as a whole or the work itself is holding me back.
I feel that my work might seem rather unpolished, maybe lacking in attention to detail? I try and differentiate myself and inject something a bit different in most projects in an attempt to ‘stand out’ (and I stress the word ‘attempt’)
Please click here for pdf Alternatively my website can be found here
Your portfolio…
What is it?
After mucking around a bit with a splash screen that was disorienting to say the least, I finally found a menu that took me to something that was pink-on-pink and long and scrolling and went forever without ever really going anywhere if you get my drift, it may have been a CV and portfolio link?
IOW, I had to work too hard to find nothing to look at.
It’s not working at all for me. When I click on the site, every time I move the mouse the entire screen of picture flies around, zooming from one side to the other. I see no way to stop this. The flash icon at the top right does nothing. If I can’t see what your pictures are it’s not effective.
I really do understand wanting something cool or different. But, if folks can’t see what you are offering within about 10 seconds of clicking on your site, they will move on. You need to engage them asap. Or at the very least make is stable enough to see where and what to click.
That’s all I can offer right now … other than I’m a bit dizzy
I like the parallax website opener or however it’s called. Cool idea!
But the portfolio itself is way too much. You have 85 Sites of Portfolio, no one will ever see through all this stuff…
Save your proudest projects and delete the rest. And I would go for 2-4 pages per project instead of 10 or more…
Website
– As others have said, your website is difficult. You need to scrap what you have altogether and start from scratch.
PDF
– I’m okay with your type choice and pink and white color scheme.
– Page 6, I’m hit with a wall of pink text that’s difficult to take in. Needs better hierarchy. Typesetting could use some work, too.
– Regarding your work presentation . . . simplify, simplify, simplify. When I got to page 11, I had no idea what I was looking at. The second time through, I saw the captions, moodboard, colour palette, etc.). If you are going to keep the deep presentation for each client (ZE, AJY, etc.), you need to do a better job of presenting a case study and make sure it’s crystal clear to whoever is walking through the portfolio.
– Pages 27 through 30, you’re starting to mix too many different fonts.
– I think you have some nice work in there, but you make people work way too hard to figure that out.
I’ve looked through your website and your PDF portfolio. First, you’re very creative, and I like your work. I think, however, that you might have a tendency to push things just a little too far.
Your website is cool, eye-catching and innovative, but those good qualities come at the expense of its functionality. If it were me, I’d keep the background movement, but I would detach that movement from following the cursor since having it do so is more than a little disorienting when trying to figure out where to click. I’d also make it a whole lot more obvious where additional information is rather than relying on the user to finally figure out that clicking on your name does something.
I’m not a fan of magenta and pink, but that’s a personal preference. Even so, pink is one of those colors that evoke strong emotions, and from a strategic point of view, do you really want to base so much around a color that so many people either love or hate?
It’s a bit unusual to have a portfolio site and then force people to download a PDF to actually look at the portfolio. Even though it’s unusual, a PDF really is a pretty good way of showing off one’s work, so I have mixed feelings about it.
The PDF contains a whole lot of work. I can’t remember of seeing a portfolio with the work so fully documented, which is good, but if it were me, I’d back off on it some. I’d be inclined to slim down what you choose to include to more directly engage a viewer with what you really want to show them. Not everyone has the time or inclination to peruse 85 pages worth of somewhat redundant images no matter how nice they might be.
As far as the work in your portfolio goes, it really is very nice — just a little overwhelming in quantity.
I really like your projects Katie. They look great! Really nice use of typography and imagery as well as colour. You should try to incorporate aspects of this into the CV section of your portfolio as this is a bit cluttered and confusing in my opinion. Let it breathe! Give it some space!
But in terms of ‘problems’, this isn’t a big one really - it’d be far more of a worry if the projects you’ve worked on were cluttered and confusing. Changing your CV section around to ‘give it a bit of air’ and to reflect the skills you’ve shown in the rest of the portfolio shouldn’t be a problem for you - you clearly have the talent!
Alternatively my website can be found here