21 comments

  • Taulant SulkoTaulant Sulko, almost 8 years ago

    The landing page is on fleek.

    7 points
  • Jacob TaylorJacob Taylor, almost 8 years ago (edited almost 8 years ago )

    Don't show me text - show me work.

    The whole point of a folio is to show off the work you have done. The portfolio itself should recede and let the content do the talking

    If I'm a client looking for a designer, I want to see the actual work you have completed, not one fancy website you have done for yourself.

    That being said, the website and your personal branding look pretty slick. I just think that hiding your work is a mistake.

    EDIT: I understand you're not the first designer to take this approach with your portfolio, but it doesn't make it correct. This trend of having nothing but text on your landing page makes no sense.

    2 points
    • Sam MularczykSam Mularczyk, almost 8 years ago

      I agree. I partly addressed this in a comment above... I know its not the optimal approach, at all. Personally, this was not a conscious effort to follow a trend - I've said to friends and collegues that, at least at this point in my life, having images on the front page greatly reduces the likelihood that I'll actually use and update my folio. It just makes me uncomfortable.

      I know in some ways that it might be shooting myself in the foot, and I'm okay with that. Right now, I'm happy for it to be a landing page for people who are coming from Dribbble or Instagram and want to see more. It works for that purpose. Plus, for actual employers, I have a PDF folio that I pass on.

      In future I'd like to rework it to approach it from a work-first perspective. What I'm saying is, your advice is absolutely correct and that hopefully I'll figure out a way to make it work at some point. But right now my work is of varying standards, in different mediums, and that makes me uncomfortable presenting it as a grid of images. Cheers though. It's making me think about it which is what good feedback should do!

      0 points
  • Thomas DavisThomas Davis, almost 8 years ago

    Beautiful as per usual!

    I prefer the text on homepage and get really annoyed with content heavy home pages.

    1 point
    • Sam MularczykSam Mularczyk, almost 8 years ago (edited almost 8 years ago )

      Thanks man!! Agreed, which is why I went for this - among other reasons... but I get that people do want something visual on the homepage. Just not prepared to do that just yet.

      0 points
  • Jonathan SvärdénJonathan Svärdén, almost 8 years ago

    You have no favicon. That's my only complaint. Good job!

    1 point
  • Mitch WarrenMitch Warren, almost 8 years ago

    I love your work mate! Great approach with the Channel Ten design - wish the station really looked like that! Bookmarked :)

    1 point
  • Daniel FoscoDaniel Fosco, almost 8 years ago

    First impression: as someone who doesn't know you, I'd like to have some context for the projects and which one I should look at first — it's a bit hard to choose, given the number of options.

    Other than that, great work! Love the way you wrap the images with a subtle frame of a browser/mobile device, please don't mind if I steal that :)

    1 point
    • Sam MularczykSam Mularczyk, almost 8 years ago

      Take it! It's yours!

      This is true, and something I really struggled with. I thought by just placing them in order it would help people choose. But in usability tests people seem to just pick the word that looks most interesting to them.

      I might just narrow down the options and have a button to see all work? That might be more helpful than it is now...

      Anyway, cheers for the feedback - really appreciate you taking the time!

      0 points
  • Evan DeiningerEvan Deininger, almost 8 years ago

    Hey man! I really like your work, and your site is great too. I'm having an issue with the images on any page (testing the Uzu one now) where when I click on an image, a layer of transparent black fades over the top with no content and a little X up in the corner. (I'm on a Mac, using Chrome version 43.0.2357.124)

    Great work!

    1 point
  • Peng Wang, almost 8 years ago (edited almost 8 years ago )

    Good:

    • Overall colors, type.

    Needs work:

    • The logo's stroke caps (square) stick out during animation. Maybe make them round, or start the lines at a different point and not the triangle corners?
    • The button animation (of border-width) seems a bit awkward, since the background thins into a line that sticks out. Maybe transition the background color into the red as well?

    Consider removing:

    • Text stretching, which is a bit awkward and blurs the text.
    • The hamburger menu just scrolls the page down. At least change the icon?
    1 point
    • Sam MularczykSam Mularczyk, almost 8 years ago (edited almost 8 years ago )

      Cheers Peng! Good feedback.

      • Round is a good idea. Will do! The way the SVG works means I can't start the lines at different points - at least not through CSS. So I guess rounding will have to do....
      • Weird, this doesn't happen on any browsers I've tested. Will add a background colour anyway and will hopefully solve your problem
      • Text stretching seems to be blurry in Chrome only, other browsers I've tested seem fine. Maybe a hack is needed
      • Hamburger icon should scroll you down to the menu (work selection). Does that not work?

      EDIT: First two should be fixed, and blurriness should at least be less apparent now. But, unfortunately, the way webkit renders 3D transforms is inherently blurry... Firefox & IE render them perfectly :/

      1 point
      • Jonathan YapJonathan Yap, almost 8 years ago (edited almost 8 years ago )

        What I find is the text blur is caused by the browser having to compute the css scale effect to a font size that's not a round number. Tricky bit to get right unfortunately :(

        One thing, I would say is the initial logo when you load up is blurry. I would have the logo scale down to get around that instead.

        Oh, and when I click on some of the images, it's not doing anything except fade the content. Got an error in the console "Error: Problem parsing points="0""

        Overlay I like how snappy the site is. :)

        1 point
        • Sam MularczykSam Mularczyk, almost 8 years ago (edited almost 8 years ago )

          That's probably it.... damn. I'll figure out the scale-down, just wanna make sure it works for old browsers without transitions! Blurry logo is finally fixed. Thanks for the advice!

          Broke the lightbox which is the reason for that fade. Can you check it and see if it's still doing that?

          Lol the parsing points thing is a bit embarrassing - Firefox wouldn't draw the logo correctly without an empty polyline element... shitty bug but only way I could find to fix it

          0 points
          • Jonathan YapJonathan Yap, almost 8 years ago

            Cool stuff, lots of things seems to be fixed now. I think encountering all this bugs is probably one good way to learn. All in all, you've done a nice job :)

            0 points
  • Cihad TurhanCihad Turhan, almost 8 years ago

    Just a small suggestion:

    Make external links open in a new tab i.e. target="_blank"

    0 points
    • Sam MularczykSam Mularczyk, almost 8 years ago

      Will think about this. Some people like this, some don't... I have an old, slow-ish iPod Touch and opening a new tab has unnecessary lag. I'm actually not super fussed about people leaving my site.

      Do you think it's more convenient to open in a new tab? I usually go under the assumption that if people want it in a new tab... they'll do it themselves. But that could be incorrect

      0 points
  • Nick Matarese, almost 8 years ago

    I would recommend showing a hero image for each project to entice the viewer to dig a little deeper and actually check out the work.

    0 points
    • Sam MularczykSam Mularczyk, almost 8 years ago

      I absolutely agree with you. Here's why I chose not to do that - it personally stresses me out a bit. Finding the right image to represent an entire project is not an easy task, and by including previews on the landing page it significantly increases the visual complexity.

      Plus, right now, I don't feel like I have a cohesive body of work that works well together in a visual way. They're all seperate projects in seperate mediums.

      I know that in an ideal world it should have images. But - at least right now - I'm willing to make that sacrifice to make something that fits better with how I currently picture my own site.

      Does that make sense? Your point is still absolutely valid and something I thought about a lot while making this. Thinking about reducing the amount of projects so it's not so overwhelming.

      0 points