Portfolio Review 1

In the next few posts I will be looking at other peoples's portfolio sites, looking at different aspects of each. I will look at 3 different types, the first will be graduate looking to get into industry, the second will be an established designer will experience in industry and the third will be a someone who has recently gotten into industry. I will use these different portfolios to help inform my own and improve the quality of mine over all. For this post i will look at the portfolio of a graduate looking to get into the industry.

Link: https://jackbetts.co.uk

First Look:

Opening this site land us straight to a showreel of the authors' projects, which is good as it shows the variety of project they have worked on. Which is important when a recruiter wants to be able to quickly look at a site and see what type of work you are capable of; even more so Designers as it is important to show you can work on a variety of different projects, showing you skills as a designer.

Clicking on the link under this showreel takes us to portfolio proper, this is where I feel this website shines. The author gives a brief outline of the game and then clearly states their contribution to each project; Each project has its page also which gives a more in-depth look at each of the projects, allowing the user to look at the one they are most interested in without having to sift through one they do not care about. However, there are no links to download these games meaning you would have to find these game yourself if you wanted to play them. Most of the time however this is not a problem, as they all have videos showing off the game and a recruiter will not have the time to download your game and play it, so a video is often the best way to show your game.

Aesthetic:

The main page of the site is mostly black with highlights of red giving it a clean feel, this main page is also fairly empty however with it only having a showreel and link to blog posts. This isn't all bad as it makes it clear at what the author wants you to look at with you eye being drawn to some random graphic on the site. I would, however, add a title to each section of this page so it is clear what you are looking at straight away. The main colour this site uses throughout is black and while this is easy to look at I do feel it is a bit of a boring colour to use, but it is also a trap I have fallen into for my site so will be changing the colour pallet I use. I say this mainly from the standpoint of a designer, as there is a lot more thought that should be put into the look and feel of the site, mainly as it shows you care.

The project page on this site is by far my favourite page, its layout is clean, it gives clear information and is easy to navigate. If I were to offer a more drastic change for this site it would be to make the project page the main page of the site, moving the showreel to the top and then links to the other parts of the site.

Ease of use:

I had no problems going through the site as everything works as you would expect, however some parts are not marked as what they are, like the blog for example. While it is easy enough to add some clear titles would go a long way to making it quicker and easier for the user to navigate. The other main part is the lack of personal information on the website itself; an example of why this is a problem can be found on one of the sites blog posts, where a user asks for the authors email to ask about a potential work opportunity. Just adding contact information to the header of the site would resolve this problem.

Overall I feel this is a strong website and with a few quality of life changes, it would move the site up to another level, making the author even more hire-able than they already are.