“Postpixel is the portfolio of Art Director Vilmar Fernandes”, so it is stated in a prominent position at the top of the site. This is a stylish flash site, which, like the other two sites reviewed, exists to display a designer’s work and provide people with a means of contacting them. Though I wouldn’t strictly label it a typical “blog”, it has a similar structure in that works are posted with titles and can be scrolled between. The site is let down by the fact that entries cannot be searched for, or clicked from an archive, they must be scrolled to. This is almost made up for with the inclusion of a highly playful scrollbar, which adds a sense of enjoyment to the user experience. Apart from this minor letdown, user navigation seems fairly intuitive and simple.

The content on the site mainly consists of design visuals, which are pleasing to view. They are both interesting and appropriate for this type of website. The tone of communication in the parts of content that are text based is quite casual, which I feel suits the site fine.

It’s hard to know how frequently the site is updated because there are no dates listed when a new image is posted. By the looks of things, the site is quite current. The blogger is contactable by a link in the left side bar – the unfortunate thing is that the link is not clickable. It would also be good to see some links to other social networking tools in order for them to build up their online persona.

Visiting the site is quite an enjoyable experience. It is always nice to find sites with things like playful scrollbars, as well as little noises here and there. I find the site to be quite successful overall, even though it is lacking a few things.

Joshua Davis – http://www.joshuadavis.com/

Joshua Davis is an artist and designer. Though this information is only listed in small text, it is quite apparent at first glance that the site has the unique, artistic layout of a portfolio site. Like Ali Felski, the main purpose of his site is to exhibit a portfolio of work in order to receive contact from potential clients. I found his content to be interesting and appropriate for this purpose.

Although the site appears quite cluttered and is somewhat overwhelming the first time it’s viewed, it is actually quite easy to navigate around after you get over the initial shock factor. It is also great to see the boxes shuffle along as you scale the window size – this is fantastic design. On the down side, I found loading the image galleries to be slow.

It appears to be well maintained, although it hasn’t been update since June. Prior to then the updates were frequent. I expect another update will occur soon. All of the links I clicked were active. His tone of communication is very professional, as he refers to himself in third person. I feel that this fits the design of his blog though, as he appears to work on fairly large-scale projects and seems to be a well-respected designer.

He is quite easily contactable with his address, email address and phone number for both offices listed in prominent positions on the main page. The text is able to be copied and pasted which is also handy.

His online persona is strong with clickable links to dopplr, facebook, twitter and flickr readily available. It appears he is quite active on the web from what I can see with the updates from those sites.

I enjoyed exploring the website. My experience was a good one. It’s different, it pushes boundaries but it’s not so unusual as to confuse people.

MTV – http://www.mtv.com.au/

As Deb discussed in the Week 5 lecture, MTV have designed their site so that the background changes each time the page is refreshed. This has inspired me to use a changing background on my layout design as a means of showing some of my photography work with textures etc. whilst also creating an exciting user experience.

Ali Felski – http://alifelski.com/

Ali Felski is a graphic designer whose main website is run as a blog. The blog’s primary purposes are to present her portfolio of work and provide potential clients with a place to contact her. Design-wise, the blog is very successful. She has used textures to create a visually appealing, unique and friendly design style. I particularly like the embedded flash content in the header – small, playful movements of birds and butterflies. I believe simple animations like this are fantastic for keeping users on your site for longer as they explore.

The site’s content, consisting of her portfolio of work, a section about her and blog posts, is appropriate, highly interesting and quite easy to navigate through. She uses friendly, understandable language in her blogs, which matches the design style of her site well. The contact section has been placed in a prominent position, making her easily contactable – a key feature of a successful blog.

Her online persona is strengthened by links to social networking sites such as Twitter, as well as people she has worked with. There is also a Twitter feed in her ‘about’ page.

I find the site to be quite successful as a design blog portfolio. It creates a nice user experience, through easy navigation, great design and interesting content. Its only downfall is that it is not updated often enough.

11 Tips for a successful Blog Portfolio

Developed in Week 3 Tutorial:

1. Focus – personalisation, uniqueness
2. Content – interesting, appropriate, useful
3. Usability – layout, organisation of content, accessibility, navigation
4. Maintenance – frequent, up to date content, active links
5. Tone of communication
6. Contact – easily contactable, community building
7. Networking – within field, being active within community, building online persona
8. Simplicity & efficiency
9. Clarity & readability
10. Experience of visitors
11. Security of content