Portfolio Research

Here I take a look at some portfolios that inspire me and that I want to critique.  Doing so can direct me with further knowledge on my own portfolio and how to formulate one. 

Above here is Mr. Bingo's portfolio website.  His work is considered not for the faint hearted full of funky illustrations and bad language!  I saw Mr Bingo's presentation at Reasons to be Creative.  First off, his portfolio site isn't the best of appealing as the on going links puts me off.  Each link demonstrates each project and is branding labelled in black down the left hand side.  His latest creation is in the middle and couldn't be more noticeable.  

Above here is Wild Dog design.  The agency based in Brighton.  Firstly is comes across a lot more appealing to me as their work is straight on the homepage and you don't have to go off and navigate ti find it.  I think it's all about first impressions and having you're work already on display to see as the first thing helps a lot and this is what I would like for mine as for my reasons just stated.  The background is white and this makes the text easily readable.  There is a main menu with other menus coming off of it to make navigation easy.

Above here is my favourite by far.  As you can see this is the homepage of Misfit Design.  When the page loads up, a flowing ink animation fills the page as if you are watching ink in water.  This is very clever and I like the first impressions of the site.  It makes it feel creative and different.  The whole page here if full of the animation with no borders making the website appear larger.  They have the logo centred.  The site has been created using the parallax effect and this is such an effective way of scrolling down seeing the page flow.  The site has social media linked icons at the top right of the page so their social links are easily available.

Above here is a demonstration of the parallax effect as you scroll the project become available.

And here too.

Their social links look like this and highlight and move when your mouse is hovering over them.  This creates the ease of use which is what you want.

Again with this site, the projects are already presented as soon as you get onto the site making it easily viewable.  The colour here is also very attractive and shoes a sense of welcoming in my opinion.  I like the fact that each project or piece of work doesn't have a border around it and they are all connected.  This wouldn't work if each piece of work were similar colours as they would collide.

Andrew Caldwell is a Digital Designer from New York City who works with UX Design.  His site is very efficient.  His choice of font reminds me of Apple's on their sit and works perfectly against the re-ocurring white background.  

As you scroll down you are again faced with the parallax effect.  The background flows to black but the writing here isn't exactly that readable.

An ongoing important fact is that the website is responsive.  Every element narrows down into single columns efficiently for smartphone users.  The information is still easily readable.

Portfolio Promotion and End of year show invites

I have been looking around at the companies that are local that interest me the most.  I have found various companies in Brighton that cover web, branding, marketing, advertising all in one and this is really diverse.  I also really like how their websites look.  Some are made up of parallax which is an awesome affect and others are more simple and to the point.  Below I will list some invites that I have contacted the companies by E-mail.  This will be for showing my portfolio too with a link.

Above here is a screenshot of an E-mail I sent to Wild Dog Designs, a design agency based in Brighton.  I have invited them to the show and given them a link to my portfolio website.  I have chosen is company because they cover such a wide range of categories within the industry.  This ranges from web, photography, branding and advertising.  I have also chosen them because they say they are an award winning design agency.  I am interested in their work and what they do because they cover what I would like to do.

http://wilddogdesign.co.uk

 The above E-mail is to an agency called Misfit Creative.  They are also located in Brighton.  They work mostly in re branding have a lot of advertising campaigns like their Valmont Water project.  They are also an award winning design agency.  What strikes me most about the design of their wbeiste is their attention to clean crisp visuals.  The site is done in parallax and has such a cutting edge, clean look.  Within the homepage, A splash of ink is moving and slowly covers the home page. I have invited them to the show and sent them a link to my portfolio website.

Tilt who are listed in the E-mail above, focus on 3D, print, web, film, motion and interactive.  I love their illustrations for the nickelodeon channel.  They have also made an app promoting the Range Rover Evoque which is pretty interesting.  I have invited them to the end of year show and left a link to my portfolio website.

Above here is a screenshot of the in bedded messaging system on a company called 'Eighth Day'.  They focus on print, packaging, logo and branding.  What caught my eye was that they have a list of clients that are Brighton based which is nice to see as its their community.  I have invited them to the end of year and show and left a link to my portfolio website.

The above E-mail is for a company called Stoasts and Weasels.  They are based in Brighton.  what inspired me is that the leader of the company Lisa, graduated from a BA course in Graphic design.  This is inspiring as this motivates me to see the doors of oppitunity for myself.  Her work consists of Book design, brochure design and branding.  I have sent the information that has followed for the end of year and show and my portfolio.

 

Career Pathways

Again this is a web developers job in Brighton but as an apprenticeship.  I think an apprenticeship would be a great way of working your way into the industry whilst getting to learn knew things.  This is also very good experience for when you get into something more solid and a better paid job.  This job ad is for a company called Gene and is for a front end web developer.  This isn't my area.   

Career Pathways

Just so I can get a more of a feel of the opportunities out there within the industry, I have looked into web.  I don't like web, neither can I code very well or produce CSS however, this may be worth learning more about as many jobs seem to be web based or some sort of web knowledge.  I might learn code more before I can work myself into the industry.  This is another job in Brighton below here for a Junior front end developer.  The skills required are HTML, CSS and Javascript.  I don't know any Javascript whatsoever so this is pretty useless to me.  However, looking into junior level jobs may be aspiring as to where to start off.

Career Pathways

Ive been mostly looking at Graphic designer jobs within the industry as this is what interests me most.  I also like the look of salary of this however I know this is maybe a leap too far just for now.  This article is for a freelance graphic designer for a short term contract. This article says the work including is branding on large scale canvasses and that you're portfolio should demonstrate you can design elegant pieces.  I have the requirements to meet this job however lack the real world experience.  I want to build this up for myself in the long run.  This job is in Brighton also so is kind of local or within travelling distance.

Portfolio Career Pathways

This job role is suit to me however they want experienced people to apply.  I thought well doing a BA if they could count this as an experience but I know this isn't within the industry.  Under the key requirements they are asking for an ability to work to deadlines, which is what everyone says so this is compulsory.  I know the Adobe suite well but some software more than others so I plan to work on software I am less familiar with.  Fluent in Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, I consider myself to meet this requirement.  This job is about print which I am interested in however like I said they wanted experience within it.  However I am interested in this field.

My Portfolio Website

Here is my portfolio website.  I have made this responsive so it is easily accessible from smartphone, tablet and desktop view.  I have included what I think to be my best work to date within what I want to concentrate on.  As I've said before, I want my portfolio to be right in front of you as soon as the site is accessed as this is what people are visiting for!  I haven't always liked the idea of having to navigate through project titles to actually see the visuals and artwork.  I have said before I just like it there in one click.  Once you see the artwork, you can click on them to find out more about them such as the name of the project, what it was for and so on.  At the top of my page, I have my name followed by 'Design'.  I haven't called this 'Daniel Ellis Artwork' or something as I am still un-sure of my direction.  I have made the font simple, but does looked lost in the shots here.  I have followed this up by saying 'I am Daniel Ellis and I love creating digital art work.  Click on the projects below to find out more about them'.  This is ultimately expanded in my about page.  I felt 3 elements were important here though.  Who I am and what I do and followed up by what is below and how to find out more about them.  The most important information.  I wanted my site to deliver the most important information the quickest, to have my portfolio there as soon as the site is accessed.   

As you can see here I have used my most recent work at the top, my Above and Beyond project.  I am very happy with this project and since its my final one, I wanted to include it.  I have the burger icon (dropdown menu) in the upper right of the page for easy navigation.  From this you can choose the homepage, about me and contact.  My background is a dull but also neutral washed out blue.  As I can see from my re search on designer portfolios, most people use white as a background as its plain and simple and acts professional.  I wanted the same results as this but maybe in a different colour so I chose blue.  This theme also has white clouds in it when the view of the site is at larger scales.

My 'About me' page is a brief outline of where Ive studied, what I enjoy doing, where my strengths lay.  I like to think I can keep this fairly short so if anyone likes the sound of me they can easily contact me through my other page.  I feel like if I go on to much this can get a little boring and dull as from a clients view, they may not have all the time in the world to read pages about somebody they don't know.  So less is definitely more in this case.  As you can see at the bottom I have my social links which are Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

  

The last shot in smartphone view is above and is my contact page.  I have included a field of Name, e-mail, subject and message for anyone looking to contact me via my site.  I have also included my phone number as I think the more information your willing to give in terms of contact info, this is returned in work almost.  I have a paper airplane above the fields for contact as this is like a letter.  I thought it would be cool to put an icon in here.  Its playful and matches the rest of my theme and clouds.   

Above here is my site in tablet view on the homepage.  One of my personal projects is on show here. I have a 'show more' link just underneath as well.

This is my site from full screen view.  As I've said, the title does looked washed out on here but when viewed I think this fits well.  I have included what I consider my best work.  I have from left to right, Above and Beyond, Oasis, book cover (The wind in the willows), personal projects of a face and strawberry, Propaganda and personal projects.  As you can see my style isn't entirely focuses as I feel I have haven't found my oath or direct route on illustrator or Photoshop as of yet but this work gives a good all round taste of it.

The bottom of my homepage.

This is my about me page in desktop view.  As you can see the background is fully viewable of the clouds and just like my contact page I have added an icon of a classic paint brush.  I think it fits what the age is about.

My contact page in desktop view has the same background as the other pages and includes the graphic icon of a paper plane.  This looks good with the background as the illusion of it flying through the sky is quirky.  There is a lot of space around the main information which could of been used in a way but less is more for more and I feel this works.  

Judging by what I found in looking at professional portfolios,  I am happy with the decisions I made when making this site and feel its main functions are there and the navigation is easy and consistent.   

Finished Posters

Below here I have my finished posters!  A few things have changed since my last post about them so I will explain.  The problems I had with these designs first off is the background stars, which aren't actually that visible in these screenshots.  A filter in PS simply wasn't working.  This was Filter > Noise.  This is how I made my starey background and then adjusting the lighting levels.  Every time I did this the stars went back to the original image which was thousands of small dots not just a few.  Because of this I had to go in individually and do them myself with different brightnesses which took a while.  

I have created some clouds, again not very visible but just below the moon in every poster.  For this I used various filters and played around with opacity levels. I have included lightning in every poster except for one.  I want to make a statement by using something thats considered very powerful and heroic and to me, this symbolises it perfectly.  I also felt that empty space in this poster series was important because I found when I added elements around the triangular shape, the same impact of boldness and importance wasn't created.  Free space does the job for this.

Lastly, I added the typical information needed on any promotion poster.  The show which is '#ABGT150' the venue which is 'AllPhone Arena' and the date which is '26/9'.

As for the bottom banner, I wanted this to be different in every poster, or at least most of them.  I have the first poster as photograph which I have manipulated, the second as the Sydney scenery made in vectors in Illustrator, the third is the Opra house but copied and made into a sort of symmetric banner.  Because of it's shape I think this looks pretty good.  The last is the Sydney vectors again.

So above here in my first poster I gathered an image of Sydney harbour and took away all the colour, went in individually with the wand toool to take any white so the illusion of the background appears through the bridge for example.  I used lighting levels to make the Opra house light enough that its still noticeable without being too dark.  I have added in the bolt with a flare off the top of it for it to appear as if it is striking the bridge to create an impact.  The star clusters are coloured orange and green with highlighted affects.  

In my second poster, I have played around with the hue/ situation levels to make the star clusters turn a different colour.  This is to match the gradient accordingly.  Orange and red would stick out un wantingly and collide with the other colours making this unpractical. I have added blurs to pretty much every element in these posters for a more softer touch so objects don't appear too hard upon each other.  This way, the colour blends in more as well giving that spooky type appearance.  The clouds aren't as visible in this poster.  I have added the lightning strikes to either side of the shape.  As to give the appearance that perhaps it has wings so It could look as if its in mid air or flight.  Or simply making that hard statement of power, however you want to look at it.

 I have added a super bright star cluster to the middle of the poster to enlighten the image.  It contours the edge of the shape.  The banner is the Opra house.   Clouds are actually more visible here. 

I really like my choice of gradient here with the red.  I have re-used my lightning at the top of my poster for the added effect.  I have decreased the opacity and added some more bolts to the left hand side going off the page.  

Final Video Analysis

These are the screen shots of my final video.  I have included what I consider to be the highlights of my video and the most important scenes.  There are a lot of cut scenes from shows so It was difficult to get them all as there is many.  My aim in this video was obviously to promote, that was my brief.  I feel I have done that but added passion, emotion and desire too which was my plan.  The reason for this as Ive said before is to replicate what it's like as fan to be there and since this is a huge milestone show, It only seemed appropriate.  There is a point in the video where the video almost 'cuts' from the up beat music to a slower part where the passionate part comes in.  The track used within this part is Above and Beyond - Peace Of Mind.  It's the slower more enlightening part of the song and I think it fits perfectly.    

The opening scene, The guys from behind.

On this scene theres a voice over that says 'Welcome to Group Therapy, with Above and Beyond'.  The opening to each of their radio shows.  I like how the lights illuminate the crowd.

The members of the group.

The fans, all hands up I think this looks great.

The fans and stage with the bright lights.

The scene above is where the scene cuts to the more emotional part of the show.  Shows a girl with her arms held out. 

Above is the slow motion part of a girl 'lost in the music'

An act of togetherness, bringing people together.

The fans.

Emotion and desire!

As you may have seen from a previous post, within their shows, Above and Beyond like to type up on the screen and thank the fans for making this possible or anything really to communicate with the fans.  This is sort of iconic for them.  One of the most well known ones is 'Life Is Made Of Small Moments Like This'.  Below here are a few more example of their messages.  From these you can see why these people above made this poster and why I have included it in My video.  

This is where the 'Thank You For The Small Moments' poster came from.  Thanking them.

Another awesome message.

A london show.

'The Future really Is In Your hands'.  I hope you can see why they use these messages.

This is a celebration.  Confetti is used. 

 

Another shot of a die hard fan.

The same girl as a shot above enjoying herself.  Wearing the classic Above and Beyond colours in ribbons.

This information is provided where the show is.

The venue of the show.

The date of the show.

When tickets are available.

Same shot as one mentioned up above.

The closing scene, the Group Therapy logo.