Curious

First comment is sadly about your website. I can't stand your blurry thumbnails- that combined with your background make me think I've had too much to drink and haven't slept for days.

The illustrations are done well but items that incorporate typography typically are lacking in composition and have awkward placement.

PS: I love your copyright:

©2012 Layered Feedback. Pilfering will result in a cascade of negative karma.

The good news... I see a lot of interesting illustrations in at least a few different styles that could be considered professional quality work. They also exhibit a funny/twisted sense of humor that might earn you a dollar or two somewhere down the road as well. I particularly like the retired gunfighter piece. So in that regard - I think you have a bright future.

The bad news... Basically everything else. I don't understand your logo. As ZM noted, the blurry website is more annoying than creative. Outside of the Pinkish Black poster/flyer - I don't see anything that really fits into the "design" realm and it's also the only piece that shows any knowledge of typography.

Okay, so a lot of beginners have portfolios heavily weighted towards one discipline because newbies tend to lean on their best skills. If that's what is happening here - my advice would be to fill in the blanks so people can see you do HAVE those other skills. It's great to say you "want to do some album covers or concert posters" in your free time (hey - who doesn't?), but reality dictates that if you want a full time design job - you need to know type, basic layout and design and all the other grunt work that makes up 85-90% of a designer's life. The other option is to forget being a designer and just dive head first into being a full time illustrator.

As always... jmho.

Thanks for your thoughts. I've actually interviewed at places like Landor, and the complaint is usually that my book is too unfocused. Too many different skills being demonstrated (which confuses me). Previous versions of my site included a lot of design work. But since I've really been getting into illustration, I took out the "corporate" stuff to give the site/work a more unified feel.

However, I'm fairly certain I can't make a decent living with just illustration work. I've been doing design work for over 5 years now but it's time for me to move forward. Most places just ask for PDF samples, so I can simply send my corporate stuff that way and leave the website for potential bands, etc.

As for the unfocused bits, that was just to try something new. There are a ton of portfolio sites that use the little cropped thumbnail thing. Having everything super sharp seemed to flatten the page, in a way that kind of annoyed me. This is like the 5th version of my site, so the thumbs may change in the future.

Anyway, thanks again for your input. I've already gotten a lot of positive feedback on the new layout so I probably won't be changing anything in the near future. You guys generally have A LOT of criticisms for everything that's posted here (and most of it is admittedly pretty bad) — I was just kind of curious what the 4 or 5 most active users on this site would say.

In the defense of where you applied to, you also have to research where you're applying. Tailor your portfolio to their needs. What sort of work do they do? If they do all logo work, chances are you don't want to hand them editorial layout pieces. Knowing Quark and InDesign as a graphic designer is good but if they are primarily brand development hand them only logos and mock examples of how the logo gets used. Brand manuals. Save the truly irrelevant skills for one portfolio item, maybe 2 max and the rest in your resume. If they ask what else you can do- show them, or better yet- ask them what they want you to prove to them. It can put you in an awkward spot if it's not your strongest task but it can also show your employer you want to tackle anything they throw at you.

You make excellent points. Landor was my first agency interview and I had no idea what to expect. I went in with pure conjecture. I have a better idea of how to approach it next time - just have to find a "next time" now.

Hi. Sorry to be late to the party. I've looked over your site and am going to pile it on a bit here. I find it very negative -- almost aggressively so -- from the fuzzy logo and thumbs to the bio (if one can call it that) to the lack of navigational cues for the visitor.

I agree with others here that there is a certain sameness to the various portfolio pieces. And the Mathematica/enneagram figure (which one might assume would have something to do with communication) yields nothing. You could click on it forever and get nothing, not even a larger popup of the thumb. What a sick (and not in a good way) joke! The sketches are either, I'm so sorry, either very amateurish or so bizarre (though very well rendered as art, apart from the typography) that I can't imagine they would get you much work, unless it were from bands with no money. (What would the point of that be?) The United Underworld piece is spoiled by the clumsy placement of type around the octagon. That would be worth working on.

Finally, the sigil logo tells me nothing -- and hey, I'm a witch! I know from sigils :) The downward-pointing arrows within a downward-pointing triangle just say downward, three times. (Or maybe it's an entomology professor's rendering of a praying mantis, showing its sinus drainage system.) There are "regulars" here who would find something vaguely vaginal about this mark. If there is some meaning behind it that would elevate your artistry to the realm of the spiritual, I doubt you're going to get that reaction from many people. It flew by me at breakneck speed.

What else you got?

I only actually looked at the work but yeah, the bio needs a complete overhaul. Some will find it cute, as I did- but that's just where it stops. It's cute and it doesn't tell me much about the person I'm looking into other than they're quirky. If I'm going to read a page labelled about it should at least tell me more than the percentage of oddity :p

Side note, I agree Mara- I can't wait for WGZN to see his logo. It has uterus written in stone to that man.

HA well NOW i see the uterus. but to my defense i historically tend to see vaginas specifically, not random female reproductory. what i saw first was a sleeping baboon.

there is stuff here that i love and stuff that i hate.

Love your illustration style and general dark wit - HATE the whole tortured soul, skulls and guns and crazy thing. personal taste there. im just over it. its all just so ubiquitous these days.

Love the minimal design - like how you integrate the blurry thing, but wish it had a bit more "value" - HATE that pop up window that everyone uses that scales to fit and HATE even more that i cant see your whole portfolio just by going forward and back once its invoked. HATE HATE HATE that i have to re-invoke the window to go to the next image or group of images. this is just a personal UI peeve of mine. i dont know where or when the use of this pop up scaling thing started. but its like having to turn the tv on and off every time you change the channel. as a metaphor, the website IS the tv. having to turn on another tv to view a different component makes no sense to me. but thats not your fault. im assuming this was a preexisting object you just deployed...

logo. aside from the uterus/baboon references, i dont hate the concept. id like to see it done with a bit heavier stroke though. as it is, it's like it wants to be strong. but isnt.

overall, i think the whole thing pigeon holes you a bit. i mean with the guns, skulls, blurry anton la vey photo, strange glyph logo and all the smoting with sulfur (even if in jest) is going to attract a certain kind of client and repel others. as a marketing effort, i say thats not smart. on one hand its commendable to be true to ones self. but on the other, is this a style youre going to embrace equally in 3, 5, 10 years from now?

if youre talented enough or connected enough to be able to generate a living from that specific a target market. thats awesome. but otherwise... not sure how wise it is.

I just got home from work and just LOOK at all these comments!

I'll try to address some points:

First of all, the whole "feel" of the site is supposed to be dark and morbid, perhaps aggressive. Why do people enjoy horror movies, novels, etc.? I think it's so they can experience thoughts and emotions that they don't normally have on a day-to-day basis. Personally, I have a practically stress-free life. I'm an average middle-class white guy living in the suburbs with a wife and kid. I love the life I've got. I'm fortunate with my current job in that I can listen to music for 8+ hours every day, and I often listen to pretty dark stuff. I can sort of put myself in the atmosphere of the album to invoke those feelings of hopelessness, despair, claustrophobia, even fear sometimes. I don't think it's much different than watching a really good horror movie, creeping through a haunted house, riding a rollercoaster, etc. We do these things, experience the emotions they propagate, and when it's over, it's a breath of fresh air and we go about our normal lives. My site intends to get the visitor's mind in a particular state while they're there (and I know it's not a total sensory assault like the above mentioned examples).

I've also got a pretty dry sense of humor. The site was created with some melodrama, and I hope the people who like this kind of work "get" that it's a bit over the top. Maybe smile a little.

I totally understand where those who mentioned it are coming from, regarding the overblown use of skulls, guns, etc. The "computer" illustration was inspired by my current job. I kind of hate it there. The gunslinger piece was inspired by the AMC show Hell on Wheels (and it's awesome). The UU/Joker pieces were done after watching the 1966 Batman movie. If you haven't see it, it's hilariously bad. I mean, HILARIOUSLY BAD. Just wanted to give that extremel goofy movie a bit of The Dark Knight treatment. Got off track there — I agree there's a lot of this kind of iconography around already, but I like skulls. I think they're cool from an anatomical perspective. They're fun to draw. And guns are fun to draw too. That's really all it comes down to. I don't own one and do not WANT to own one.

I certainly didn't intend for a "tortured soul" feel. There's nothing in the work that would suggest it's a personal diary of some kind. As I said, I've got a pretty dry sense of humor, which admittedly no stranger would really know. Plus, I'm 30. So there's no "adolescent angst" either. And I think to relegate those kinds of sentiments to a passing phase, etc. devalues them a bit. AND, I think there's plenty of gooey, happy go lucky Hallmark illustration styles out there too. The fact is the market is already beyond saturation in every possible way. But, this is what I like, so what can I say.

And yes, the site does pigeonhole me, but I've tried a more diverse presentation and that hasn't gotten me anywhere. I've had some recent interest expressed in my professional work, so we'll see where that goes. I haven't done ANY creative work outside my day job for the last 5+ years, so I'm gonna do what I want to do now, dammit. Furthermore, I know the style is polarizing. This thread proves it. But the kinds of artists I'm appealing to do utilize this kind of work for their products. I know it won't pay the bills, but it sure would be fun to do as a hobby.

The Anton LaVey comment cracked me up. I'm an atheist, so there's definitely no satanism to be found here. And yes, that's me in the photo. I wasn't aware there was a likeness!

Also, for god's sake, don't apologize when you make criticisms. It only makes you sound like you're trying to do me a favor by attempting to soften the blow.

"There's nothing in the work that would suggest it's a personal diary of some kind."

Then it is surely curious that we all read it *exactly* that way. It also seems you are defending it as such. In the end, the site will be what you most want it to be. The world's reaction should have no importance to you if that's the case.

By the way, adolescence has a pretty flexible timeline. My mother, who died several years ago at age 84, never grew out of hers. She was a damn fine artist, though, I'll give her that. It may be, in fact, that artists never move on from adolescence -- the phase of human development most characterized by trying on diverse realities for size.

Do what you do and see what happens. If it doesn't work out the way you might have wished, try on something else. :)

I'm only defending the dark nature of the work. Some commenters here were fairly dismissive of it. But as you said, I'm not too concerned with the minutiae of opinions. It is what it is and people can like it or not (although it would be nice of someone besides me thought it was okay). I expected a flood of negative criticism when posting the link here. I haven't really had an opportunity to defend my crap yet, so this was good practice!

Fair enough, and thanks for your input. You are right about the popup mechanic - it's a bit of JS called Lightbox. I've used it in a couple other sites I've built, and basically use it because it IS easy to just drop in a line of code. I haven't really found another way to setup the gallery in a way that pleases me. I generally don't like each piece on its own page. I try to keep my sites as light as possible. But the vastness of the Internet has taught me that there's probably a solution out there that I just haven't seen yet.

I think you're overanalyzing it. My point is pretty simple - if you want that full time design job, your website needs to reflect that desire. You need to exhibit the kind of skills that will lead to that kind of career. If you want to illustrate album covers and rock posters "in your spare time" then that aspect of your skill set should not be the main focus of your website. So maybe you need to decide what - exactly - it is you want to do. One thing you should consider is musicians are corporations too these days - they don't want Joe Sixpack skull and gun illustrator. They want an accomplished designer who's going to create something professional for their professional music. The illustrations should be one aspect of your website. You also need to show your other skills (if you have any) if you ever want to move on from doing album covers and posters for your friends and the local bands who can't pay you for your work.

But that's the "softened blow". You want the full on hammer? If you want to make a living in this business - it's time for you to grow up.

As always... jmho.

I guess that's a humble opinion...

I apologize for mentioning "design" in the original post. I didn't think it would be such a problem. These are just drawings. They aren't exactly meant to capture the zeitgeist of the modern age, so take er easy.

And thanks for the "hammer" of reality, but I'm plenty grown up. Now where did I put my happy pills...

depressive