Portfolio site

Curse you! Curse you for creating such a nice looking thing! No really I like it lot, it's not often bright pink can be pulled off but it looks good here

minor things

You have

Kent Institute or Art and Design (no named UCCA) but I guess should be now?

Not sure if it's strictly part of your site but on the linked SeanNee page, the navigation took me a while to find, not that obvious at all.

thanks for that - Got a little scared when I saw the message so it was a relief to see the positive comment!

Spelling mistake has been spotted.

The Sean Nee site is really old, It was a site I did at home while trying to get into web design.

It's an interesting point though as other people don't know that. Maybe I should put a date next to the sites to make it obvious that there has been a progression.

Cheers for the feedback.

Love it, Matt, particularly Brighton Pier. Your graphic art is stunning and the site design is fresh and uncluttered. Accessible too, simply booootiful

I think I see a typo... European Sprits... probably had one or two too many when you wrote that

Would be interested to know how you go about divorcing your personal portfolio/work from the work you do at CST-group.

I have nothing more to add to the comments above. But I'm posting because I fully agree with them-- great piece of work!

Superb site, well laid out, clear and easy to use. Your crib sheet section is great.

The only minor thing, and this is really, really minor, I think you could put a bottom margin under your footer, just a small one so it sits up a little away (maybe 0.5-1em) from the bottom of the browser window on the longer pages.

The other thing which struck me and I don't know if its intended or not. Your background gradient ends with a different colour from the flat background colour.

Lorraine: thanks for spotting the typo! Fixed now.

Any web stuff done in 2005 has been done at CST. Apart from the PTF site which I did in house for them the rest were done freelance with an eye for getting a design job while working as a database administrator. Currently I only have one on-going freelance project and that has been stop and start.

As for the print stuff this is all done in my spare time. I’d really like to do more of this and ideally split my time between web and print. I’ve done a few for other people but mainly these are made for my benefit. I’m thinking of putting some kind of “order this print or enquire about a one off” (or something) link on each page and then maybe I’ll get lucky and get to do some more. What do you think? As this is something I am prepared to work hard at I wouldn’t expect too much money but the cost of getting them printed large isn’t cheap.

Chris..S – I’ve added a bit of padding at the bottom – I’d looked at that and for some reason got lazy!
It’s a shame that you are seeing a different colour on the bottom of the gradient. I’ve tested on a few machines and apart from an old IMAC I can’t see the difference. I’ve had this problem before though where I have had a gif with a certain colour and then placed that in something with a background the same colour and on the IMAC seen a difference. Is anybody else seeing this?

Thanks for the encouragement on this!

Now that it has been pointed out, I have spotted a colour change on a TFT monitor on longer pages.

If you check the bottom colour on your body_bg.gif, you'll see it is #c6e9fb, whereas the body background colour is #c5e9f5. The difference is very slight but, clearly, enough for the eagle eyes of Chris..S. Changing the body background colour to #c6e9fb should no longer offend those with finer visual sensibilities

Although using a gif for the gradient has worked here, I have found that the jpeg format will render a smoother gradient than a gif - summat to do with gifs restricting the maximum number of colours to 256, I believe.

Just a bit of twisted thinking on the graphic art thang. Have you considered doing some (pro-bono) design work on posters and the like? Try sounding out some of the local clubs, Lions, Rotary, Round Table etc. Get your work noticed by these types: most of them are inveterate networkers or run their own businesses or are high(ish) flyers in others. That could generate a commercial demand for your work. Or does that sound just too silly :roll:

Thanks for that – I’ve changed the bg colour now. Hopefully that has fixed it without me needing to re-save the gradient image. Is it looking OK to everyone?

As for the artwork – I think that is a good idea actually. I’m doing an illustration course at the moment so I’m planning on getting more involved in that after I’ve finished.

Thanks for all your help!

Matt

Just to say - really love the artwork! The header & logo's superb.
The layout works for me.

Did you upload your new style sheet? I still see the old background colour.

I did do but maybe it was this weird gif thing mentioned above.

I've re-saved the repeating background image (body_bg.jpg) and this shifted the final colour slightly to #C6E9FB so the I've given the bg this colour.

Does it look OK now?

Its gone now. Odd though, it shouldn't have been the gif, I made a quick check (after forcing a CSS refresh) and got the same colours as Lorraine posted, ie. the background colour hadn't changed.

Still, its ok now

phew!

at least it's OK now - thanks for pointing that out to me and for help on other topics.

cheers

Actually, one thing I’m sure there is a better way of doing is the header image.

The idea is that the higher the screen resolution the more of the pencil you see.

The pencil is at a slight angle and is not a repeating image like the line on the other side. The way I’ve done it is to use one big bg image across the top that is aligned centrally within a div that is as wide as the body element (BODY is used for something else). The actual image is bigger than most screens and the pencil part is to the left of the center with transparent space on the right like this (see attachment):

This means that no matter how wide the screen the pencil stays in the same position. This is OK as the picture has few colours and I managed to save it as a very small gif. But what if I wanted to use a more detailed image?

I thought that maybe aligning it left would do it but it’s always to the left of the element – that is the image’s left hand bit is always at the same point so shrinking the screen size moves the image.

Any ideas? Or does this actually make any sense?

Thanks

Matt has a really understanding boss .....

P.

Gi'us a job, Paul

Zomg it's teh boss!1!!1oneone

Everybody run and hide!

ha!

errr - I'm not reading this while I'm at work it's errr another person.

Doh!