My portfolio - please help me how to improve it

Hi guys,
Recently I created for me a web portfolio. I’ve spent some time designing and coding it and I’d like to know, what you think about it.
I mean - what would you improve about webpage’s design?
Please be honest, I don’t have much skills and I’d like to make it better :slight_smile:

You can find my portfolio on www.jtomori.tk

As far as usability and design go, I like the vertical-scrolling portfolio. The images are fairly hi-res, so when I go to click on them it takes me a few seconds to load. You could look into adapting them to pop up in a shadowbox-like window so your users don’t ever have to leave the page.

thanks for notice, I’ll try to add this feature :slight_smile:

Ok, I added this, gallery has nice overlays now.

Any other notices or things you’d improve or add?

I’m digging design and interface. What kind of jobs are you applying for with this portfolio?

To be honest, I’m not sure :slight_smile: I don’t have much experience with proffessional jobs. Now I put lot of time and effort to prepare myself for university.

I included in portfolio my skills such as 2D, 3D graphics and knowledge of html, css, php, javascript and more. I’ll do any job I’m able to (archviz, designing websites, posters…). If someone give me a task I’ll do it, to improve myself and gain skills.

The goal of creating web portfolio was to design and code nice portfolio and publish my work and I’ll use it for applying to university of VFX in our country.

Nice original layout. How about using a less blocky text on the left? Looks good no matter what, but try a couple of “fun” fonts there.

pretty nice. A few thoughts:

1)I like the layout, simple easy to navigate
2)I’m not really sure what you did for each project, did you do everything? were they group projects?
3)I agree the text on the left is too big, and block, if your going for the web 2.0 look, which I belive you are, i’d look into designing those two buttons more.

Overall, good job.

rather than saying, you did “everything” say design, camera work, programming, also might not be a bad idea to say what software as well.

for example:

Morning:
design, final cut pro, nuke, director

also, I didn’t even realize that the desciptions were there until the second time i viewed the site, maybe just move it below the image or make it pop up faster on the image. also the top description bar is a little wierd, I kept wondering what it was, why is it there then I realized it’s like a heading to a table.

also, if your trying to be a designer, you should make sure your website really accents your ideas on design. it should be your most coveted project, since the most people will make decisions on you based on your work, and your site will get the most hits.

Just in terms of coding and usability, I’d like to point out:

  • I don’t understand why people insist on using frames to deliver their simple sites. Frames have a use and a purpose but this is not one of them. There are tons of usability issues against using frames, so I’d say only use it if its the only way to do your site. And your site can easily be done in divs instead.

*It doesn’t flow nicely down. ie I need my browser to be at a certain size to view it properly. Look into responsive designs.

*Like Shawn said, it’s not immediately apparant that the images have any description. Mouse over overlays only really work for thumbnails and not larger images. This is mostly because users are accustomed to thumbnails being portals to other information whereas large images are just there. Put the information above/below each image.

*Add some padding to your left text, or make them a block clickable. Right now I have to click directly on the text.

*You need more information about your images. I have no idea what I’m looking at or what you actually did.

*Your contact information is given surprisingly little importance on your site.

thank you all for your responses,

hmm, I know it is not apparent, that if you hover images, you’ll get more information. I’ll try to find some solution.
And you’re right about the descriptions, I’ll rewrite them.
I’ll also make the text on the left clickable as a block.

About that flowing down, dgovil I am not sure if I understood you, you meant, that it is not obvious, that you can scroll page to view more?

Well by reflowing, I mean this:
http://twitter.github.com/bootstrap/

Try resizing your browser window down and see how the content flows down into a version optimal for every display size? And how navigation is always given primary importance

Your site requires me to have my browser window be a specific size to work. Anything smaller and the navigation gets cut off.
It’s one of the banes of side bar navigations, is that you have to plan better for different screen spaces.

Also it doesn’t work too well on my mobile phone, which the reality is now that a large percentage of web views come from mobile devices. Specifically I can’t scroll your portfolio page down.

(My current site is terrible btw…I’m just speaking from experience of currently creating a new site and avoiding the pitfalls of my old one)

Yes, now I understand,
I tried to make my web page well visible also on older screens, I’ve chosen the smallest possible screen width - 1024px. but I know, that it looks weird and cut off on smaller screens and I have no idea how to fix it :D. And I know, that it looks bad on mobile screens, but it’d probably need to recode the whole design.

Ok,
I’ve improved site a little, added some text to encourage visitors to hover images and I’ll also rewrite descriptions (add more info about work and software used)