Meet my portfolio.

I create this portfolio recently, still working on it. I would like to have some inputs. Thanks
http://juanluque.sparkvideoweb.com/
Juan

Edited by juluque, 23 October 2008 - 02:13 AM.

1. Skip the splash page. What else would you do besides "enter site" anyway? This will bring you directly to the ....

2. Wonderful artwork!

3. If you make something idiot-proof, the world will build a better idiot. These better idiots will choke on your "autoscroll" main navigation. Consider using a slider with buttons something like on keller guitars where your "point and click" people can still find their way around. I personally LOVE these kinds of automagic scrolling interfaces, but have encountered a lot of people who don't.

Consider also, the possibility of having different levels scroll at different rates so you can get some parallax/depth in the piece. Not necessary but not hard to accomplish and it would "unflatten" the work a bit.

Finally, there seems to a be a bug in autoscrolling that I have worked unsuccessfully to fix. Try loading your site in a browser tab. Then load another site in another tab. Come back to your site's tab. It's empty or layers are missing. If you solve this problem, let me know. I have many hours into it and it's not fixed with AS3.

4. Your numbered navigation topics do have a typographic treatment, but they aren't of anywhere near the artistic quality or style of the main composition. I think you set the bar high for yourself with your background. Challenge yourself to make your buttons just as magical and integrate them into the piece rather than lay them on top.

5. Is there any need to number the sections? I only ask because if you didn't number them, you could hide the art section instead of putting a "coming soon" message in there. Now, you have to have it or there would be no number 2.

6. Graphic Design portfolio - I think you're resizing bitmaps in Flash. Either bring them in at the size you're going to display them at or (even better), save your vector graphics as swf or ai(v.8) from Illustrator and then bring them in as vectors. You'll get a much crisper display and save some bandwidth, too. The site loads slowly and I suspect taht large, scaled bitmaps are the reason.

7. The popup windows that display the portfolios have obvious signs of being styled. The closebox and borders look hand-drawn. Good! But again, you haven't achieved the standard you set with your background.

I'm nitpicking on you, but it's a compliment. I think you have a nice piece of design work there, but you've added a lot of stuff that is quite clearly not the best you can do. As you polish each element, ask if you have achieved a consistent standard of excellence through every single piece of the whole site. If you treat each button and each window with the same level of seriousness (and silliness) that you put into the background, the whole thing will come to life. You're actually really close. It's just that last 1/2 of 1% that's a bitch.

Cheers,