Symo's Design Portfolio

Research ...

My first bit of research before building my website on hotglue.me was to look at already existing professional portfolios. This helped me to get an idea of what is and isn’t needed. This meant that I was able to design my portfolio in a professional manner, without including information that would be needless and clog up my pages. This method of research also gave me ideas for what looked good and what didn't work so well, so that I could make designs for my own portfolio that I can be confident of.

The first portfolio that I looked at was that of Matt Harney and below is an image of his homepage.

When I looked through Matt Harney's page, I found a lot of positives. It is full of simple design and effective imagery meaning that it is easy on the eye. Something that stood out on this page for me was the lack of 'pages'. As an alternative Matt has his site in sections all of which are on one page. This means that you simply scroll up and down to the relevant sections. with very few links taking the user elsewhere.

As there is with everything, I feel that there are a few sections that would benefit from being looked at. Firstly, the images used for his links to LinkedIn and Twitter are both exactly the same and without looking for them they aren't obvious to find. Secondly, the way that some of the text has been written is 'playful' which works well with his theme, although there is a lack of consistency.

You can view Matt's page at:

The second portfolio that I looked at was that of Adham Dannaway and below is an image of his homepage.

Another example of a portfolio I came across was this one to the right, by Adham Dannaway. Immediately his portfolio caught my eye with an impressive home page split between 'designer' and 'coder'. This filled the screen with one of the options dependent on where the curser lays. With such a creative and aesthetically pleasing home page it draws in the user and forces them to look through the rest of his portfolio. He very impressively sells himself to any potential employer.
Adham has clearly been successful with his work, and this has gained him a lot of media/press coverage within the industry. All of his information is simple, clear and to the point.

If I had to pick out any bits of Adhams portfolio that I think could be improved then they would be as follows. He could benefit from his site being re-worked. I also would suggest that he could do with having a list of his numerous skills under his 'about' section as his current skill set list isn't the easiest to find.

You can view Adham's page by visiting: