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Hello HN: I am quitting school for freelance, here's my portfolio

ivzhao.com

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Re: Hello HN: I am quitting school for freelance, here's my portfolio

#41

Post by kgosser »

kgosser wrote: post #39

I was prepared to look at this thread and produce a silent laugh to myself like most over eager people this age, but I have to say that I was really impressed with your site's visuals and content. Anyone who can land you for a project or two will hopefully get an asset. Good luck. Check me out on Twitter @kgosser or www.krisgosser.com if you need any networking help.

With this said, there is a lot of great constructive feedback as comments; all warrant a thought. It takes a lot for someone to open him or herself up to feedback like this.

My 2¢ is that the feedback regarding hovers for mobiles is correct, but I can see why you did it. Overall, it's not far off and I can see the potential you have.

If we are going to expand this thread towards what's a good portfolio site... well text is just as an important communication device as pictures of your design work. The angle you took with your site and having more text than image is ok by me. I felt like I got to know you, and even enough to comment on this thread which I rarely do (I'm a lurker).

Re: Hello HN: I am quitting school for freelance, here's my portfolio

#42

Post by adrianscott »

ivanzhao wrote: post #24
adrianscott wrote: post #14

i suggest you learn about the role of contrast in readability/usability

My take was that low-lighting allows me to pack in more information without cluttering the page, so all can be fit into one page.

I'd encourage you to reconsider your design goals and potentially run some usability a/b tests via mturk. I'd be very willing to scroll down a useful page with info. The current design makes me want to run away (no offense intended) rather than read/hire.

Re: Hello HN: I am quitting school for freelance, here's my portfolio

#44

Post by jaxtapose »

nonrecursive wrote: post #13
ivanzhao wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a play of "low-lighting". Mouseover to highlight it. EDIT: thanks for the suggestion. I just darkened the text a bit.

My honest impression was that you must not be very good at what you do if you can make something as basic as reading your site so frustrating. Then when I came back here and read that you have to mouse over the text to read it, my first thought was "why would someone who advertises does iOS work make their site impossible to read on an iOS device?" I did eventually go through and check out your 3 degrees of wikipedia…

> My honest impression was that you must not be very good at what you do if you can make something as basic as reading your site so frustrating.

I felt that it was overly wanky and art-bloated and neglected basic principles of Information Architecture, Usability Heuristics, and Interaction Design.

Re: Hello HN: I am quitting school for freelance, here's my portfolio

#46

Post by ryan-allen »

nostromo wrote: post #38
ivanzhao wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for your suggestions (especially the one about Opera). I have darkened the text, now working on other issues.

You might want to darken it some more, It's quite hard to read. On a touch device, like the iPad, there is no mouse-over. Even if I touch the text, it stays light gray. My personal rule of thumb is to think twice about every onmouseover design decision because of the proliferation of touch and mobile devices.

I still can't read the text. As a developer who has spent a lot of time working with designers, this screams to me that you're unrealistic and don't think about your actual audience. So I'd fix the damn text contrast. And if that requires a complete reshuffle of your design, so be it!

Re: Hello HN: I am quitting school for freelance, here's my portfolio

#48

Post by roadnottaken »

I think your site looks stunning. It really caught my eye and I actually read the whole thing (almost) because I kept on moving my mouse away to do something else and something would change and catch my attention. Very unique and compelling.

Unfortunately I'm not an employer :) Good luck!

Re: Hello HN: I am quitting school for freelance, here's my portfolio

#49

Post by ivanzhao »

kgosser wrote: post #39

I was prepared to look at this thread and produce a silent laugh to myself like most over eager people this age, but I have to say that I was really impressed with your site's visuals and content. Anyone who can land you for a project or two will hopefully get an asset. Good luck. Check me out on Twitter @kgosser or www.krisgosser.com if you need any networking help.

Thank you for your kind words. To be honest, I was a bit overwhelmed about the reactions to this "low-lighting" thing. However I'd like to stick with what I believe in, at least for now : )

Re: Hello HN: I am quitting school for freelance, here's my portfolio

#50

Post by DanielN »

adrianscott wrote: post #40
DanielN wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not meaning to be obnoxious but do you, or anyone else, have any suggested reading material on this and similar topics as they apply to web development? Thanks.

no offense taken, thanks for asking. i did this quick search which provided a number of resources, including a jakob nielsen (year 2000) citation, plus some more academic studies. http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&#3...

Thanks, that is exactly what I was looking for. I'm somewhat surprised this isn't a larger topic in web design. Maybe I'm just looking in the wrong places.
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