site crit?
- Started
- Last post
- 15 Responses
- midori
first and foremost, thanks. second does it function ok? third any design improvements?
- utopian0
• Functionality works fine in Safari 3.0.4
• Portfolio pages loaded a bit slow with a cable modem
• Overall design and UI was just okay
• Photography was nice
- akrokdesign0
function, yes.
form, square.a real logo would be a nice treat. as its pretty plain.
- utopian0
Midori, here is a site with a nice list of Photographer based websites, maybe you will find a design that inspires you, best of luck: http://xhilarate.com/Photography…
- ukit0
You guys are tough;)
I remember the days when anything nice and clean would get good feedback on here
- I thought I was fair and honestutopian
- "the utopian way"akrokdesign
- wendog0
nicely written post - it makes you come off as humble :)
Anyways, functionality wise it was a bit slow...I think it's cause everything is broken up as images? Might be better if you re-work the CSS in there? Not sure, it might just be my browser (safari 3.0.4) or my connection. I'm seeing a flash on the nav that makes it feel kinda glitchy...Other than that it all loads up pretty good and the images come up smoothly..
As for design, I think its a bit bland...I'm not feeling the way you aligned the type right on the nav and your logo...The logo needs work, it looks like you just picked a font and color and typed in Photoshop...
<a href="http://tinypic.com" ><img src="http://i31.tinypic.com/6j3i2p.jpg" border="0" alt="Image and video hosting by TinyPic"></a>
This spacing is killing me too, clean up your gutters to match up better if you are going for the clean CSS table look...
Lastly, I would try playing around with an alternate fonts or even the same font with different weights...It may spice up this bland page a bit...BAM (in emeril voice)
- wendog0
img src="http://i31.tinypic.com/6j3i... border="0" alt="Image and video hosting by TinyPic">
- wendog0
<img src="http://i31.tinypic.com/6j3i2p.jpg" border="0" alt="Image and video hosting by TinyPic">
- alright FAIL...sorry sorrywendog
- http://i31.tinypic.c…creative-
- Samush0
Your work its great, i love the everyday stuff that makes interesting photos, i never seem to be able to spot it that well though.
- 23kon0
if you want people to find you then get some html text on there saying what you do who you are and where you are. also some meta descriptions and tags in the html would be a good idea.
i couldnt be bothered waiting for "portfolio" to use as i was at work. how big is that file? or how slow is your server?
nice photies that i saw on the homepage
- skt0
the thumbnails are far, far, far too small. and it took about a week to load.
- midori0
thanks everybody! yes it is painfully slow. trying to work that out. i use Media Temple so its probably my code. thanks for all the tips on the fonts/layout/logo. ill give photoshop another go.
- Spookytim0
Thought I'd look and reply as a totally non-websavvy person.
Loads way too slow
Thumbnails laughably small
I like the simplicity and the look. Its undertsated and lets the work breath. Designers will always criticise a site design that doesn;t look slickly designed, but if you're not a designer, and it is clear and functional, then I say kick em in the grill.
I think the pictures, or some of them, could be shown much bigger. Maybe some key pieces could be shown much much bigger to give more visual impact.
I thought the work was great overall, but frequently dipped into the merely competent and occasionally utterly commonplace and I wonder if you might find a further edit useful to just show the images that really grab. I always think these days that total laypeople can build a portfolio of competant digital photography on flikr, so the pressure on photographers to edit their portfolios down to only those images which remain demonstrably better than the accidental photographer is increased.
Overall, I liked looking at your work but I got bored of waiting.
- kona0
nice start but i feel like your text 'portfolio' etc and logo are really cramped. try giving them some breathing room. and a nicely designed (but simple) logo would do wonders for the page.
your square thumbnails don't do your work any justice. they're far too small to give the user any inclination as to what image clicking on them will produce. try a 25x25 square (or whatever you think would work best size wise) and work on a nice crop of your image to create a mini composition in your thumbnails.
nice work though. could use a bit of color, or at the very least a background gradient to give the page some depth.
- midori0
thanks again guys. these comments are very helpful. i can unfortunately not take credit for the images. They are my buddy Jeff's who im putting the site together for. I have forwarded him this post so he gets your comments on his work as im sure he will appreciate. I will start coming up with some ideas for a logo, not just basic text. i have spaced out the links a bit more.
http://www.graybrandsted.com/as for the thumbnails. we talked a long time about how to do the nav on this site. we were both really tired of the ubiquitous thumbnail on photo sites so tried to come up with something else. originally we didnt have the little cubes at all, just click on the main image to go to the next one. we want to keep the focus on the work. next we had just gray cubes. what we were trying to do is give the the viewer just an idea of the color in the section of images they are looking at. not actually useful in knowing what is the image before clicking on it, but just give a sense of the general tone of each section. of course we cant explain this idea to people that visit the site so if its not working maybe we should rethink our approach.
best regards. ill repost for your thoughts once we get a logo/loading issues hammered out. thanks!!