Competitive Analysis

Professional Designer - Digital Portfolios

Design
This portfolio is easy to navigate around and I think that the colours work well together. I am not really sure about the Flash header as some of the circles seem to be closer than others. Upon closer inspection this is actually a repeated pattern and they are supposed to be touching in places. I don't really think this works and looks a bit out of place. I can understand why they have chosen the two images as they are a design company based in London but they could have picked some more relevant to design.

The site has a clear and understandable navigation system so the user can click and find what they would expect to find on the page they are navigating to. It is clear that this company offer a lot of services and have a good range of work to show in the 'Our Work' section.

Something else that is evident is that they have a large client list which they display on the Our Work page. I would think this would be more effective if they were a list of links instead of just being a list of words. The companyt could also do to add a space between the name of the client and the red cross as this feels a little compact in places.

Personally I would not think that this is a good idea putting a full list on the website, it does show that they have a large client selection but it might have been a better idea to put a sample list of clients with their best work.

On the portfolio page it has a clean effective layout showing what software was used, tasks performed etc but I would have preferred a bit more information about the project and possible some development examples.

I do prefer this to the Student Portfolio I have found as I feel this is a lot more user friendly, however passing this through a validator showed a higher number of Validation errors than Matt Gibsons Portfolio.

Student Portfolio - Matt Gibson

This website has a varied range of work on including web design, games and photography. Personally I think his website is a bit dark and needs a few brighter colours, I do not agree with the white text on a black background as this will make it hard for some users to read. The blue links make it even harder to read what they say being against a black background.

Using tags as his headers are not a good idea. I think they look a bit out of place and it is more code to add them in.

I do think he has a good layout though and it allows him to show his work effectively. The pages are consitent and he is using CSS to control the layout and presentation of the site but neither pass the W3 Validators and for someone who claims to do this it is a big issue. I have also noticed that one or two pages do not work or are linked up incorrectly.

I think my main issue is with his use of colour and not making it very accessible to other people. Another concern is with the line length, some users will not read long lengths of paragraphs and might find themselves losing there place. If it were a shorter paragraph this may be more manageable as a bigger chunk of text.

It is clear that he is using PHP to help drive his website which is helpful for updating. He can add a new record to the website and it would be updated quite easily.

All in all I think that this could be a good website if changed the colour scheme, mainly the background colour, and made the text a bit more readable.