Time-lapse of a designer designing his agency's website

mardix · 5 months

Is there anything that this script helps you with which capistrano isn't suited for?

vanishingspy · 5 months

i know very well of his achievements and have seen multiple videos and movies featuring him. that's not my point.

if it's sarcasm, it should probably be 20 feet between bolts.

i'm just saying that 10 is not that uncommon and to actually be funny, it should be something that IS ACTUALLY sketchy

rouxious · 5 months

Planet Granite, Sunnyvale, California - http://planetgranite.com/ (Sometimes I go to the Belmont one, as well)

and when I'm back home (like now over the holidays):

Klifurhusid, Iceland - http://klifurhusid.is/

vanishingspy · 5 months

Hmmm. Maybe I don't get it. So, he actually feels it is sketchy? That doesn't sound like him, so I'm guessing it's supposed to be him being sarcastic?

I mean, 10 feet apart is not comfortable, but it surely is not that uncommon?

VitalianBeef · 5 months

ok, great. that's helpful to know. thanks

VitalianBeef · 5 months

Yeah, sorry if I'm wrong. I don't actually have a clue where the line lies within this /r/ ಠ_ಠ

VitalianBeef · 5 months

These are all my opinions, and I assume many people won't agree with me, but I look at the world through a usability point of view, more than a purely visual one. So I weigh usability and practicality above pure visual design. </disclaimer>

When reviewing something like this, it helps to know who the intended audience is. I will assume from now on that the audience you are trying to impress are potential clients.

Now for my design critique:

I love the fonts and their colors on the front page.

Thumbnail grid:

Awesome that the wider thumbnails at the bottom align to the smaller thumbnails (though I'm not sure how you will solve it when you have more than three per row)
I personally would appreciate it more if it were to utilize the width of the page, eg. by making them larger.
It feels like the spacing between the thumbnails should be greater. You are utilizing a lot of whitespace on the page, and it feels like the space between the thumbnails is to small to fit the rest of the page's rithem. Maybe bringing them closer to each other would also be good, since they would form a stronger collage.
I personally prefer some sort of caption with thumbnails, I hate to play the guessing game. For instance if I browsed through those, then come back and what to see again something in particular or am showing somebody else, I have to find it again. Not ideal, imo.

Pop-up lightbox thingy:

The close button is positioned off my screen (i might have a small resolution on my macbook): http://cl.ly/0M0V0g05440X0Q1g3B0G
(when you close the lightbox thing that pops up, there are horizontal scrollbars that get visible.. makes everything jump a bit)
The hit-area for the lightbox arrows seems small and strange to have them low on the screen like that (you'd get a bonus point for having a hover state on them, but that might just be me)

Top right menu feels to me like it doesn't fit the rest of the design. Both having a thicker font and it looks darker than, for instance, the black in the logo. (I also don't like separators in a menu, like the /-es, but that might be a pet peeve).

The logo isn't clickable, so there's no obvious way to go back from the about/contact pages, except the portfolio link (which might not have been obvious if people don't associate your front page as being the portfolio)

In the "about" page, I find it weird to have the text as an image there, but I assume the issue of visually being able to wrap the text around the image was more important than the usability downside to that.

Content critique:

Strange to have illustrations in the form of sketches on the portfolio. Maybe they were actually a final product, but you should only have things that you are proud of, that look good, and are a final product on the portfolio. Quality over quantity - even if it meant that you had to remove almost everything. If you want work as an illustrator, you should try to get some finalized things out there, because clients are really, really, really, phenomenally bad at evaluating work in progress. (And again, sorry, if this was the final version of something, but if so it's also pretty uncommon for something that's actually used in an advertisement etc)
You should try to emphasize the kind of work that you want to get more of and which you are good at. You should probably say on the front page what kind of work you focus on. Have a tagline or a headline that states who/what you are and what you are good at would solve that.
I first thought it might be a design agency you were representing and didn't realize it was that of a person, until I saw the about page. I'm not sure how important that actually is, but it helps the brain to form context.
There's no mention of where you are based (I'm not sure what the "Windy City" is, but I assume it's something I'm supposed to relate to like the Big Apple, etc) -- A lot of clients only work with people in the same area etc and will want to have a face-to-face conversations with people that they work with.

Conclusion:

The design is clean, minimalistic and simple. I like it, but there are a lot of usability considerations that need to be taken care of.

Nice work, keep it up and good luck

VitalianBeef · 5 months

That doesn't seem to be visual design critique, but maybe this /r/ is more broad that I've assumed before.

You're right, none the less

strangeandlikeable · 5 months

Pretty good.. Take these pointers with a grain of salt, not sure if I'm right:

The color palette is interesting, though I find the choice of red to be a bit boring or not working.

I would try to do something differently with the small words (the, you, is) -- possibly choosing a dark version of the background color.

The words form a shape that is not very strong, selecting stronger lines that the words follow would generally be better.

Spacing between the words is a bit random and throws you off a little bit. Possibly related to the shapelessness of the words.

All in all I like this, but I feel like it needs just a little more work and then it will be excellent. Good job.

thebinarycarpenter · 5 months

Interesting point of view, I hadn't thought about it that way.

thebinarycarpenter · 5 months

that is def taller than most rock climbers, though. But good point, I thought he was a tiny bit taller that

LivinWithMom · 5 months

French people say ALLER ("go") all the time, you can use that in combination with Venga and "A muerte" (To the death) .. should give an international feel to your cheering, if that's what you're looking for..

You can also steal some from my language, Icelandic:

Áfram - means "go on!" - pronounced: "ou fram"
þú getur þetta - "you can do this" - pronounced: "thu get er thetta"
Upp með þig - get yourself up (command) - pronounced: "up me thick"

hope that helps?

thebinarycarpenter · 5 months

actually both of the things you mention are relative to height.

so if you weigh more because of height, your height-to-strength ratio should be the same as for smaller climbers.

Flexibility is also relative. Being tall is no guarantee that you will be less flexible. If taller climbers are more commonly less flexible, the reasons might be of other nature, eg. you felt more clumsy when you were younger so you didn't emphasize stretching etc or you didn't need to be as flexible..

I'm not an expert on physiology, so those things might be wrong. But until we have evidence in the thread for otherwise, I wouldn't jump to conclusions.

A good example of a strong, flexible, non-heavy and very tall climber is Adam Ondra.

thealoof · 5 months

Looks awesome. Regarding size, so I'm guessing it's not nice enough just to lift up your feet?

Btw.. You do realize that your handboard setup forms a smiley face?

thealoof · 5 months

can I pay you $_______ to make me one?

flubbily · 5 months

Dude. That photo is so boss. respect

poo_smudge · 5 months

ohh.. now I get it. She is two people?

(jk)

poo_smudge · 5 months

"A few friends"

How many is few? 3? 5? 7?

That's a strange correlation right there. I wonder how many people on average have only one working eye.

Are you an eye doctor or a nurse?

Did you make friends with them before they lost their eye sight or after? And if "after", is there then a correlation?

sylezjusz · 5 months

You are welcome.

Chessboxing sounds awesome by the way :)

I'm also a developer and have a hard time considering myself a designer, even though apparently design is my stronger side these days. I personally think that that is a better foundation to start from.

Keep it up. And post more stuff.

Wado · 5 months

Oh, yeah, it was really busy. Never been to a bouldering place with more than 20-30 people around, so that was weird. Felt a bit like a climbing gym.

I climbed one V7 I was pretty proud of. Acid wash right (jug-start) - very satisfied with the weekend.

arnorhs · 5 months

I moved from Iceland to the bay area. I live in Mountain View and have started going regularly to the planet granite in sunnyvale. That gym is so awesome. My gym back home is pretty small and basic.

Regarding the exercises, maybe I should try just 3-4 exercises that I'm excited about and only try them.

And it's very possible that I should just keep doing whatever I've been doing, just moving on to harder routes. I've been working on a couple of V8s and that's going surprisingly good.

But there's one thing that I find hard in training and that is to do cycles. Horst recommends 3-2-1 for my level. 3 weeks of strength/power, 2 weeks of endurance and one week of rest. I'm pretty excited about the rest week and the power/strength, but I don't have the discipline to do the endurance ones.. :S

Thanks for your advice. It's really helpful

arnorhs · 5 months

Thanks. That's really good advice.

Yeah, I should probably do some rope climbing at the gym, that might help. Or hang on a hangboard for a while practicing the pump.

And the mental aspect, you're probably right about just trying to zone out and not think about it. Knowing and trusting your spotters, etc.

SethRader · 5 months

You could think of things you both have in common, or a conversation you guys once had, possibly on a topic that you both had strong opinions on.

From that you could brainstorm what symbols or imagery could represent the topic and try to google for it or make those somehow - and then place them on the poster instead of the generic fingers pointing and bird flying symbols.

Just an idea.. Good job overall. I just saw the updated design and it looks very good. I don't agree about the "gloomy door" font - I think it fits well, but I agree that the "perfect reason" font is a bit weird there.

You can also repeat some of the other fonts into that text space. That will give it 2% more of a consistent look and feel.

Good job

arnorhs

TROPHY CASE

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