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Luke Alford
Courses Plus Student 2,173 PointsBuilt a new theme for my website, after some constructive criticism.
So I've be building this theme on an off for a while in my little free time, its simple and straight to the point.
All this was designed in browser apart from my image assets I really need to design myself a logo as well hehe but anyway check it out.
go nuts pull it apart, I want to release this theme so tell me everything you love and hate so I can make it worth for the rest of the world.
PS if anyone want's to know this is built on Anchor CMS which is a create little lightweight CMS for blogging.
Luke ^_^
3 Answers
Adam Fichman
9,502 PointsMatthew Campbell I believe "Writings Who Work" are navigation links not a saying :) Luke Alford While the general direction of the site is getting there, there are definitely a few things I'd work on. On my screen, the navigation is cut off. I can only see the top parts of the letters, looks like there's a height issue. I see you have a height of 13% assigned to your <header id="top"> element. Try adjusting it making it a little larger. Also, right now, as Matthew pointed out above, the navigation, while looks clean, isn't immediately identifiable as navigation. It looks like an extension of your logo.
The site also starts to look pretty messy at smaller sizes. It looks like your breakpoints could use adjusting. When creating your breakpoints, instead of focusing on specific screen sizes, create breakpoints around your content. When the content starts to break, that's where there needs to be a breakpoint. Take a look at some of the smaller sizes and you'll see that your logo starts to cover up the content on the page.
As for the content, take a look at this article. There are some trends in portfolio sites that make no sense that I think you would benefit from taking note of. For instance, you have a graph of your skill sets. While I understanding trying to help people understand what your skillsets are, does it make any sense to say you do 80% of web design and 60% of front-end development, especially when on your home page you say "I'm a Web Designer and Developer". Another thing is that when people visit your portfolio, they want to see your work. That's what they want to see the most, then if they want to learn more about you, then they will click to other pages and read what you have to say. So give them your work first. Don't make the user click to another page just to view your work, give it to them right on the front page, or at least some of it. I understand that you plan, design, and execute your work, but don't we all? Your work is what will separate you from the rest of us so show it off.
I think you're on the right track. You've got the basics of a clean design started and your content is nice, just needs some restructuring. I hope my comments are helpful!
Good luck!
Kevin Korte
28,148 PointsI like the flat and clean UI, however there is no hierarchy of information. I don't have a structure of most important to least important for my eye to follow on pretty much ever page. You can create this with fonts, styles, weights, sizes, colors, etc. The choice is yours. Thats what I noticed. :)
Matt Campbell
9,767 PointsSpelling and grammar, the main content is not centered and in my opinion "Writings Who Work" makes absolutely no sense what so ever. As a theme, there's not much there. There's no main navigation which is the first thing people will look for/notice.
I'm not sure on the contact page, it's not very intuitive and the yellow background has got to go. If it's a theme, then there should be a theme between pages. The contact page has no relation to the homepage.
Luke Alford
Courses Plus Student 2,173 PointsLuke Alford
Courses Plus Student 2,173 PointsThanks for your comment, I've been flat out the last six months and haven't been able to look at it very that too much it.
The writings who work is my menu, it just doesn't stand out like you said with the font being the same as my logo, I plan on creating myself some useable branding in the coming weeks. Once thats implemented no doubt it should break up the section a little bit making it more legible. Also a little thing I like about my menu is that if you were to take every first letter it creates WWW which I find quiet funny and relevant to the internet since we do develop for it.
Yeah I've falling victim to the worst portfolio, hehe that poped up in my feed a weeks back. I really need to sit down and spend some time planning how I want to show my work, I just find showing an image of a website just wrong and it doesn't feel right to me since around 70% of my latest work all I've done is front-end work and not the design. So posting an image of the website sort of gives off the impression that I designed it before they have even looked further. Ive recently swapped out images on my work page to logo's, I think I might do something interactive with the logos. I was thinking of having more information appear on hover about that particular project then linking the project directly.
Responsive I've only currently done mobiles, which is partly due to time it's high in my list to do.
Thanks for the great constructive criticism I'll take it aboard an be doing adjustments over the next few weeks when i get time :)