Fantastic skate decks by Emil Kozak
Over the past week we’ve received some submissions for critique so I decided to put it all together in 1 post as ‘Critique Sunday’. Here I offer some critiques on the submitted designs that either give praises or some useful advice.
Aaron Pearce
Devato is the personal portfolio of Aaron Pearce that showcases his web and print work. I like Aaron’s approach towards his portfolio, keeping things simple and elegant.
For high resolution the work didn’t scroll horizontally because it all fit on one screen. I’m not sure if there’s any solution to that but it does cause some confusion. At first I thought the site was broken because the arrow wasn’t working as a result.
I also thought that the rollover could possibly have a green border for consistency and I think there is great opportunity to do something nice with the navigation in terms of typography. Use cufon to use a custom font and use something quite elegant and graphic. The arrows also should be more stylized. When you go with a minimal design every element matters and you have to make them look as good as possible to help your site stand out.
Devato
Devato
Faizan Qureshi
This is the portfolio for Faizan Qureshi who said:
It’s always very hard to do something for yourself. I have always hated working for myself because I’m a critical client. Sometimes I talk myself into liking something that may not be as polished as my client work. It is for this reason that I’d like my website to be critiqued.
I couldn’t agree more with this so I’ll leave my thoughts which hopefully can help you.
Personally I don’t like the colour. The navigation is quite lost since it’s in between the content because of placement and treatment. Because it looks like other titles and placed in between content, it’s rather hard to pick up. The navigation should have prominence in positioning and stand out in the entire design.
I’m unsure as to why the featured designs are over the title/name of the site and why as featured designs their thumbnails are so small. I think that’s a glitch but one big thumbnail should be used over 2 smaller ones.
Faizan Qureshi
Looks Like Good Design
This design is simply clean and stunning. It goes straight to the point of showcasing good design. What I like in terms of functionality with this design is the fact that as I keep scrolling to the bottom there’s a loader that indicates more is loading. Wait a few seconds, keep on scrolling, keep on seeing awesome work. That’s a great detail because the site has many images to load, so this is useful for slower connections or computers even.
Looks Like Good Design
Run and Shout
A great portfolio consisting of some amazing typographic work. The design is clean and simple aiming at just showcasing design.
Run & Shout
Capitol Circle
Capitol Circle is real-time Washington politics— bringing together 493 individual politicians and insiders, and 181 blogs and news sources from the right, left, and center. It has a highly corporate design which is good because it’s targeting people in that audience. The simplicity also focuses on legibility making content easier to scan. Overall a nice site if you’re into politics.
Capitol Circle
Joel Delane
The blog of Joel Delane showcases and features great designs and designers with a lovely design itself. I love the aqua blue accent colours but I really found those lines misleading. At first I thought it was this cool slider that I can drag left or right but that’s probably just me.
Content is easy to scan by placing them into boxes with short paragraphs and thumbnails. I like on the bottom right of the featured box the ‘news’ dropdown. That’s a trendy little detail that improves browsing experience. Nice work overall.
Joel Delane
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Boldis Media
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Aaron Pearce
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stevemorel
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Joel Delane
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dmadray
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Faizan
