SDV3

Screen design for home page version 3

Screen design for portfolio page version 3


Screen design for contact page version 3

Portfolio Screen Design V2

Here is version two of my screen designs for my portfoilio. I have taken into consideration the points raised with the last version and made changes.

Please let me know what you think.

CD 2

1. Ready To Go (U.S. Mix) – Republica (First Album Track)
2. Teenage Dirtbag - Girls Aloud (Cover Version Track)
3. At Last - Etta James (World Music Track)
4. Gimme More - Britney Spears (Pop Music Track)
5. Eine Kleine Nachtmusik – Mozart (Classical Track)
6. You Give Love A Bad Name - Bon Jovi (Rock Track)
7. Lucky Star – Madonna (Personal Choice)
8. 99 Problems - Jay-Z (Rap Track)
9. Prologue (Little Shop of Horrors) - Little Shop of Horrors (Musical Track)
10. Hey Scenesters! - The Cribs (Local Track)
11. Girl - Robots In Disguise (Electro Track)
12. Pumpkin Soup - Kate Nash (Most Recent Album Track)

Screen Designs Version 1

Here are my first screen designs for my portfolio. Please give me any advise that you have to offer in terms of layout or design. Any ideas of what I do with the design in terms of Flash or other technologies would be appreciated.

Competitive Analysis Portfolio

Professional- http://www.outofthetrees.co.uk/index.php

This site belongs to ‘Out of the Trees’ which is a collective of freelance designers.

This site starts out with a standard home page that fills the screen. It has a brief description of what they can offer and an image and testimonial of previous clients which randomises each time you visit.

My first thought is that the page, although provided all the necessary information looks to spread out and that the content is too weighted to the left with a large gap in the lower right. This is subject however to the site having a variable width and when I reduced the size of my window the site actually looked much more appealing. I can understand the benefits of a variable width but personally I would want to ensure that my design was being viewed at its best by the majority. As far as I am aware most people wouldn’t be viewing this on an 800px width screen.

The main section of the site is the portfolio section where you can view examples of their work. I think they have got the navigation of this site spot on. The number of examples they have put on is not too many to put you off looking through and is enough to provide you with a decent choice to sample.

The way in which they have laid this out is to provide a snippet of each image in a small square. The squares are animated and enlarge once hovered over and by clicking you are taken to another page.

The page then provides further details about that brief and you can view the image in its entirety by clicking on its file name. The image opens in Lightbox. I like the fact that they have used Lightbox as I think this is an effective way to display work as it doesn’t mean navigating away from a page. I personally feel that keeping the amount of navigation low is priority and that by doing this you keep your viewer happy. I dislike it when I go onto a site and I have to hit back ten times to go back to my search results or a previous page. It would be something I will keep in mind on my own site to keep this to a minimum; I think a good way of doing this is to have links open in new windows as theses can be closed once the page has been viewed. I think that using Lightbox is something I will also want to incorporate into my own site as this will also mean that viewers won’t have to navigate far from my homepage.

Overall I think this site is successful; it has a tasteful colour scheme, simple navigation and good content. The only downside is that I think that should have tried to keep the number of page transitions lower once looking at the portfolio. Once in the Portfolio and having clicked on the image I want to view I think it is unnecessary to have to find a further link and click that to finally view the image. I think it would be much smoother viewing to have it instantly pop up. Obviously they have written content to accompany their images which is why they have done this but I am sure that another arrangement could have taken place so that if you wanted to read further you could then navigate to that information.



Student- http://cleanandeasydesign.co.uk/index.html

Clean and Easy Design is the portfolio site of Paul Mackenzie who is a current student at Leeds Met University.

Firstly I like the look of this site, the colour scheme reminds me of my own ‘Grass Roots’ page. The layout and style remind me of www.adobe.com with the use of the drop shadow and at the bottom of the page there are some icons that show what he is proficient in which are not unlike Adobes own.

Despite the similarities I think this is a strong design for a portfolio, the separated sections break up the content which makes it appear more interesting and less of a chore. What I do feel is that it is almost twice as long as it should be for a home page. Personally I think that a home page should be a brief introduction to the site on which no scrolling should be required.

Once you click on the Portfolio section the site maintains its overall look and you move seamlessly to the portfolio section. My main concern would be that all the content is off screen but this isn’t a great concern.

One thing I did notice is the spelling mistake of the word University and also that he has pointed us to the left of the portfolio page to see contact details even though this is actually found on the right.

Other than a few minor errors such as this I feel this is a really strong site in itself although the work it is promoting isn’t as strong. The best piece on the site is the site promoting the villa which has taken a possibly dull site and make it look contemporary and fresh.

http://www.holidaycyprusvilla.co.uk/ what I would say about this though is that to view this site, by default, you have to do it within the same window which means if you want to have a good look around going back and forth through pages you are not getting back to his home page in a hurry, this unfortunately happened to me.

Overall I think this site is really strong and I even had a look at the CSS to see how he has set his navigation to show the selected page which as it turns out is just going a .selected version of your navigation. This site has definitely given me some food for thought.