Would you give me some feedback/ second opinion on my portfolio site?

Hi Amy,

It's not terrible, and here are just a few tips/suggestions (I mean it all as constructive criticism ;) ,don't take anything personal, and if it seems like I'm being an a** I apologize):

• I like the fact you chose different fonts other than the usual "Helvetica", "Open Sans", gives your work a bit more personality. I'd suggest a little work on the line-height of <p> tags and a little kerning, so it's more pleasant to read (basically, make the words breath a bit). For that I'd recommend Treehouses course on Typography:

http://teamtreehouse.com/library/web-typography

It's by FAAAR and beyond one of THE best courses I've done here on Treehouse and to this day I come back to it for references. (no, they are not paying me to say this). It will give you some excellent tips on working typography, text, paragraphs and titles.

That was one major thing I wanted to point out.

A second thing is (maybe!*) review your color palette choices. You have some contrast going on, which is great, but some colors are just too bright (some greens and reds), and using them as background colors or in logos is a little much for the eye, and look a bit off... in other words "not designer work material". You ARE in the right path, just review the brightness or other color combinations ;) Look up some inspirations on sites like Bechance, or Dribble; see colors that they use and play around. Color schemes are a tricky one to get around, but with some time and researching (looking other's works) you start to develop a better eye for it. That being said, I like the purples you chose for your home page.

Small detail that makes a big difference for whoever comes to look at your website: This pictures are too small when clicked:

• http://amymcknight.com/img/medium_mynhcg.jpg
• http://amymcknight.com/img/medium_homeward.jpg
• http://amymcknight.com/img/ElitePrintAndPack.JPG And also they are loading in the same page. Make them target="_blank". If you give people a door out of your main page, they will go out and we don't want that! Sure people can zoom into the pics, but they become pixelled and hard to see. Just save and load them at somewhere around 900px by whatever height you want them to have.

The header you have on the front page is not the same as the about or contact pages, with you logo and "Front End Web Developer"... make them consistent, it calls for more attention to what you do.

That's my 2 cents :D hope if nothing else at least gives you some food for thought. Good luck

This is surely just my opinion, but I would say she's pretty much right about what she said. The whole combination indeed looks like outdated and therefore it's hard to be on top of competition with current web design market.

What I would do differently? Well, I would change the colors, make some light borders around each portfolio item, change the line heights for text, maybe make an full width footer with contact information and so on. Also I would make sure that the home page is the first navigation item as well. For SEO purposes, every page should have different tittle tag and you should write an meta description for every page as well.

One good idea might be to put all information from these three pages to just one page? Your landing view could be a full size picture with some partly transparent color layer on top of it and some short decription in the middle and navigation on top. Scrolling down shows what services you offer, your portfolio, more about you, and finally contact information with contact form.

There's so many options, and there was just some of them. Anyway, that's still pretty good work for a first handmade site design. Good option is to look at how others are doing same things, but don't just copy someones page, get some ideas and make them "your way".

edit... couple minutes too late after Flavio, partly with same suggestions :)

First of all, congrats! Personally, I think that your site looks good. I do think that some of the projects look a little dated. On the other hand it shows that you've done a lot of projects. I can't speak to whether it would hurt your prospects to find work. I've never been involved in any hiring processes and I'm not a designer.

I heard a developer on one of the podcasts that I listen to say that although he's NOT currently looking to leave his job, he applies for jobs every once in a while to stay sharp, test the market, and see what skills people are looking for. You could always apply for a few jobs and register with agencies in your area to see what kind of response you get. That will certainly give you a good assessment of how other professionals view your work.

I would say stick with the courses and maybe come up with some personal projects to practice what you learn. Add those to your portfolio. As they get better swap out some of your older projects. Maybe you'll get more freelance work and you can also apply your new skills to those projects as well, and add them to the portfolio.

Other than that, I would say (if possible) link to some bigger thumbnails or incorporate a modal window. The current images are too small http://amymcknight.com/img/medium_mynhcg.jpg

Thank you so much! Looked over both of those and have book marked them to watch later.

Thanks for sharing your story, too. It is encouraging.

All the very best in what you are doing!

Amy