Student Portfolio Critique (ethants.com)
5 years ago from E TS, Designer
5 years ago from E TS, Designer
Looking good man!
I'd say you may consider swapping the Facebook case study with one that has work you're able to show. The quote was great and Facebook is an awesome name, but you're a student with work samples and I def clicked on it and then assumed you didn't have anything to show. When I'm going through portfolios it's usually a dozen at a time, so I'm pretty rapid fire till I get to work samples.
Thanks Brandon. I've been debating swapping it around and I might do so. I really admire MetaLab's work and would love to get in touch at some point!
YO! I'm bad at designernews. Hit me up when you're looking to chat brandon.arnold@metalab.co
Just sent you an email Brandon!
You're a hell of a visual designer, man. Rock on.
Thanks Scott!
Very clean site man, and a great portfolio of work you've got.. especially for a student.
Should grab yourself an SSL certificate.
Probably the cleanest site I've seen for a student, great work. You're getting off the ground running with some great experience as well, good luck in your career!
Really impressive folio for a student.
One minor quibble that should be easy enough to fix up - there is a really obvious FOUT (flash of un-styled text) when the site loads. You could either use a bit of javascript to fix this, or at least use a sans-serif fallback in your css stack so the change isn't as obvious.
https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/webfont/1.5.10/webfont.js
(and you should probably pay for the typeface too, unless it really is called Font1)
Thanks for the tip Paul. I’ll fix that. This was the first site I’ve coded (still learning). And yes I did pay for the font, but it’s actually called “untitled” and I think I renamed it just so it was clearer to myself. Love your site by the way!
It's a very nice font.
Very impressive site and work.
Thanks Jordan
Looks great.
I don't think you need the menu. Your homepage is essentially a menu.
Don't remove information on hover. When I hover over a project on your homepage, I lose the name, which I need to interpret the information I see and make a decision.
Thanks Paul! I think that's a great suggestion especially as the hover state is so large. I also just shot you an email.
I don't see it.
It's [myfirstname].[mylastname]@gmail.com
Just tried again!
Hey Ethan great job with putting together your portfolio. Really digging some of your work, especially the branding for Google Go North.
One suggestion for the experience of the site is to have a way to navigate between projects when you're on a project page. When someone reaches at the end of the project, it would be nice to have a way to easily navigate to the previous or next project oppose to going back to the homepage or clicking on the hamburger menu.
In term of the presentation of the work, I would consider trying to make the thumbnails a little more consistent. I find when there's consistency in thumbnails, it shows attention to detail and strong visual skills. Something to think about is that the thumbnail doesn't necessarily need to show the entire work since it acts as a preview to the project itself. The goal of thumbnail for me is to entice the visitor to click on it and usually that means making it as visually appealing as possible while accurately representing the project.
Lastly, I think there's some really good stuff in your Misc page but it's getting lost, especially on mobile. Your doodles are pretty awesome and I would consider making this page into 3D Doodles and showcasing more 3D work that relates to visual design.
Again, great job Ethan and all the best with your last year of studies.
These are all great suggestions. Thanks Peter, really appreciate it.
I was going to make the same comment: "...have a way to navigate between projects when you're on a project page"
Otherwise, this is a really nice site!
Really great site, Ethan. Very clean and easy to navigate. The only critique I would have is the color of your subheadline copy. The contrast is quite low against the white background and fails almost every bit of criteria here: https://contrastchecker.com/
If you darkened the color from #919191 to #585858, it still has a lighter visual feel, while remaining visually accessible to all.
Thanks Alex, will do.
Lovely stuff!
Yeah your portfolio and your work are both awesome. Nice.
On the desktop, I'm really digging those hover effects on the portfolio items. So smooth. The actual deep-dives and case studies are so thoughtful and complete. I know how long it can take to gather, fix up, and add notes to all of those assets. The actual quality of the work you've done is overwhelming, you should have no problem getting your foot in the door for interviews with this strong of a portfolio and a engaging about page.
I will say that the right-floating burger menu is something I've never seen before. The animations are functionality are all well executed, but because of the unconventional location, it almost looks like a glitch to me, I was hesitant to click it. When scaled down to the responsive size, you still have "ethan", "menu", and "about" as links. Why not just have "menu" only since the other two links are already in the dark modal that pops up? Just a thought.
Great work, the North type is
Designer News
Where the design community meets.
Designer News is a large, global community of people working or interested in design and technology.
Have feedback?
Login to Comment
You'll need to log in before you can leave a comment.
LoginRegister Today
New accounts can leave comments immediately, and gain full permissions after one week.
Register now