http://www.ryandesigns.net

Hi all,

I just redesigned my portfolio and I thought I'd get some feedback on what you think of the design in general. Is it visually appealing to you and also is any information or elements I should add in?

http://www.ryandesigns.net

Thanks in advance for any advice.

"ryandesigns.net" at the top is a bit pixelated.

I'd say the way you've setup your portfolio is sluggish at best. A name of your client means nothing to visitors until clicked, so perhaps try thumbnails as many others have, or invent your own method of conveying your work. But again, the way you have it now is clumsy and oafish.

For contact, I found it unpleasing and a suprise to have an email program launch as I was expecting contact information to be listed. You may want to setup a page designated to displaying the methods in which contacting you are available. If you're unable to concoct more than just email, write a paragraph of informative text pretaining to how you deal with clients or something along those lines.

G'luck.

While I don't think it's "sluggish", I do thing you'll need some tweaking. Thumbnails, and a listed contact information, or a contact form, is definately something to think about.
Try to keep away from new windows in your portfolio. Be consistent. If one portfolio item shows in the middle of the screen (like most of them) make all of them do that. Even the flash. If that doesn't work, try something else. But be consistent.

I do like your design though, and your rollover effects.

thanks for the feedback and being honest. the consistency issue is definitely a good point and something I probably should've thought about originally.

the way the contact me is setup right now is partly due to my own laziness in not wanting to setup a whole new page just for an email address--but I can see how it can be annoying / surpising the way its setup.

At any rate, I'll be working on improvments on all the things mentioned...

The white text on the light-grey background at the bottom are a bit hard to read. Also one thing that isn't really a design concern is in your portfolio, you list all the sites that you've done and in the list you have 'blogger' which at first glance makes me think that you worked on google's blogger.com site, but the screen shot indicates other wise. Perhaps another name would be better?

Your logo could use some work.

You varig picture is awesome. Lightning going to strike you down every time you go to toronto.

You should get screenshots of those flash sites in there, I hate flash and being taken to a flash site automaticaly bugs me.

I don't know if it's just my version, but when viewed in firefox 1.0.3 'portfolio', 'resume', and 'contact me' are positioned improperly and jump to the correct? position on mouse over. I'd suggest downloading firefox and checking it out...

It doesn't really look good for a web designer to not have tested his/her page in common browsers.

edit: I checked with another computer and have the same problem

also, your page isn't valid HTML. check it out here and check your css here

Yeah, this happened to me too. I thought it was just a fluke when I looked at it at work 'cause when I hit refresh it didn't happen again. But it happened again just now. Seems to only happen on the very first visit 'cause now I can't do it again.

Weird.

you have to clear the cache and re-load it to duplicate the problem. refresh won't do it, you need to re-load

Yeah... shift-refresh works too...

yeah I think that's the keyboard shortcut to reload I couldn't remember what it was...

DespoticAcolyte: I would also look into the issue of your 'menu' items moving/resizing when navigating from home to either portfolio or resume. between portfolio and resume everything is fine

thank you all for all the feedback. i tested the site on both firefox 1.0 and IE when i designed it originally and it showed up fine for me--but i guess its not perfect yet. this is the first time i've tried designing a site using all css.

the varig graphic was one i just made for the fun of it and wasn't meant to be a serious ad anyway.

i know the text on teh bottom is a bit hard to read--but i figured its not really that important anyways--but nice to have.

oh yeah, don't get me wrong...it looks good. I still have trouble with all css layouts I just thought I'd nitpick. But I really would make sure that your page is valid HTML