Spencer E Holtaway Personal Site
I find designing for myself the hardest thing, as there's no real brief, and my work doesn't have any particular style. This is why I've gone with quite a simple look.
I would love it if you could take a quick look at this sketch of a personal site and give me some 'first glance' critique on it.
The portfolio section and the resume pdf download aren't yet functional, and I plan on making the inky frame a lot more eye-pleasing (for example, drawing it out in ink and scanning it, or something).
The site can be found at www.spencereholtaway.be
Thanks for your help,
Spencer E Holtaway
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Why Shockwave?
1. Why did you use Shockwave? The fade-in at the beginning of the site is hardly noticeable.
2. Why not mark this up using clean, standards-compliant XHTML and CSS? You can almost accomplish the same effect.
3. If you are completely not wanting to let go of the fade, I suggest redoing it in Flash 8. (more people have it installed)
4. "welcome." is not centered in the ink-blot.
What Vortex said
The use of Flash only detracts from this simple site. I'd like to see it in XHTML/CSS.
That said, it's a good clean design. Not sure about how your "logo"/name is aligned, have you tried it on the right? But maybe it works where it is, too.
Personally I'd like to see some examples of your work on that page to get me to want to look at your portfolio more. You could put maybe 3 thumbnails within the blue box. Or, maybe you could put just a little more text in there, just something more interesting that "welcome." (even though that would take away from the simplicity of it a little).
More to do, indeed.
Yep, I agree with both of your comments - it seems entirely pointless for me to be using shockwave on the site, as it is.
The reason behind using shockwave is that the portfolio will be the most shockwave-intense part of the site, but obviously that's not up yet. I'd rather get the general feel right, then go into the long task of putting my entire portfolio into a gallery!
I'm having trouble with the "logo/name" - well spotted. I've been on MSN hassling one of my good friends about it, so hopefully it'll come together soon. I'm pretty glad that nothing apart from the current mis-use of shockwave/director has caused a big concern with it, but please do keep comments coming :-)
Thanks again,
Spencer E Holtaway
Graphic Designer
Something is wrong. I could
Something is wrong. I could not see the portfolio or download the resume. When I click on the big square nothing happens. I'm on FF/OSX10.4
In the original post it says
In the original post it says that those parts aren't working yet. ;)
Where'd it go?
Have you removed the site? Maybe I'm missing the Shockwave plugin. This is the big problem you will face - if someone doesn't have the plugin and they get a blank page (or perhaps worse, a 'plugin missing' place-holder and redirect to a plugin download site) then they probably won't bother with it further. Go with XHTML/CSS for the main page, you can easily link to a flash section for your gallery from there (but give the user an indication/warning that it is a Flash section the link leads to).
Them's my thoughts anyroad!