You’ve received a lot of good advice so far. Unfortunately, you seem reluctant to take any of it to heart.
With your current website, you’re positioning yourself as an expert or skilled in: website design, UI/UX, digital imaging, print design, branding, fine art photography, commercial photography, video production, animation, fine art, and book making. That’s too much.
You shouldn’t worry about having four examples per category because, in my opinion, you shouldn’t worry about having multiple categories. Have one category, call it your student portfolio, and show me 10 rock-solid work samples.
It would further help if you could figure out what you want to do career-wise and concentrate on that area.
I briefly looked at sum of your pages. You are not a bad designer you just seem reluctant to cut out anything.
If you’re going to school for UX/UI then some design examples, wireframes, and completed sites are something expect to see.
I’d be much less interested in looking at your photography, art, digital animation and videography. All areas i think fall flat and miss the mark.
The minimals in branding is pretty cool then i scroll down and see Atomic Energy. The orange and green colors vibrate aganist each other. Which is distracting to my eye and i didnt bother looking at anything else with that project.
If I make a smaller portfolio with more things cut out, I think I’m actually going to make it a separate website and keep this one as a generalist portfolio so I will have both. Then I can show a portfolio to an employer that is more specialized and has some more impressive pieces I will devote more time into, but I will still have a general skill website I could use to show if I needed to show some different/other skills and things.
Thank you Billyjeanplxiv. Yeah the Atomic Energy isn’t my best work. I really actually just need to re-do some parts of my portfolio. The professor teaching the portfolio class at Collin College still advised me to keep that one in my portfolio because I needed enough examples of branding.
I kind of like having a generalist portfolio site up so I can see all my weak points in my portfolio and what I need to re-do or improve on.
I think I’ll just make a separate portfolio site that is cut down to just my best work and leave out all the other skills that are less impressive and “miss the mark”, but still keep my generalist one up because I think it’s still useful, just in a different way.
Thanks. I’ll work on building a more specialized portfolio.
Pluto - Thank you for breaking down your critique.
I will work on building a second portfolio site that is smaller, less comprehensive and only focuses on my best work and strongest skill set, or at least the ones that I will be working on specializing in.
I think less is more for a design portfolio - but present the ones you have more thoroughly. Don’t assume that people have the time or attention span to look at the whole thing top to bottom. If your first example in a category has not won me over, I will possibly scroll to the second, but not much further. The thing is, you spend too little effort to explain your portfolio, and your working process behind it. I think you should select only the very best projects you’ve been working on (e.g. Miximals, Taco Bell, Q-Score/Q-Quest, as well as maybe Glacier Peak and Harry Llama if you did both website and logos for them) and make detailed and compelling case studies out of those. The rest, dump it. Seriously, throw it all out.* Stuff like “guy without background” and “bounce animation” just reveals your beginner level.
Edit: * Maybe keep a section of personal projects for your best paintings and photos, as some of those were really artistic and beautiful to look at and allow us to take a glimpse into your personality behind the designer.
Thank you. I’m still going to keep the Drawing Dinosaurs site, though, because I need another website I coded myself in my portfolio and it has javascript on it (that I’m still working on completing). It might be worth re-designing the graphics on it later or adding javascript to a new website, but I need some javascript in my portfolio because one of my goals I’m working on is to eventually be proficient in front-end web development (at the very least the basics like responsive html, css, and basic javascript skills).
The parts of my “generalist” portfolio I was still working on finishing and getting up are mainly the UI/UX stuff I’m working on finishing or improving and then focusing more on development. I might possibly do a few more photoshop projects for the digital imaging section if I have time.
What if I just kept the top 3 sections (web design, UI/UX, digital imaging) + miximals since you mentioned it was a decent project. I suppose I could keep 2 rows of 3 then if I keep photography and art for personal projects unless you think those should be merged into one category of personal projects. If I keep the top 3, I will focus all the time and energy I can into improving those sections. I’m sure I will also be focused mainly on those top 3 sections (web design, UI/UX, digital imaging) this upcoming semester for my portfolio class because of my major.
I think it actually kind of still helps to put all my junk into my portfolio because then I can see all my crap laid out and compare all my pieces more easily to sort them out and see which ones I should keep and which ones need improvement and stuff like that. Maybe I’ll just keep putting up stuff until I get all my stuff up, pick the best things, and then remove all the extras? idk…
Ocoao - Thank you. Your advice was really helpful. I agree with it for the most part. I’m probably going to keep my A/B tests for both welcometonightvale.com and tacobell.com, though, unless my professor says otherwise or change them based on how the professor recommends when I do my portfolio class.
Pluto has a very good suggestion for you here. I totally agree that potential clients will always notice your worst instead of your best, just as when you create a piece in three options for a client—they will pick the worst one virtually every time. The old saying is true “Put your BEST foot forward!”
That’s like showing up to a job interview with a white belt karate suit. It might be endearing, but you are not impressing anybody. As we are all trying to preach here: Only put up there what’s your very best.
And an extra tip in regards to the website presentations: don’t just show a monitor mock up of the website, show some close-ups of the details you designed the best. Instead you send them via a link to those websites - prompting them to leave your site.
If you want to show of your snazzy web design skills without sending people away from your website, how about making your portfolio website really top notch with all the CSS, Javapalooza and whatnots?
Oh, and another one…
That’s not what you do on your public portfolio, that’s what you do on your desktop.