Grid Style Theme

Hello Bryant :)

Really nice, dynamic portfolio you're building here. Overall, its very engaging and well laid out. I have a few nit-picky comments, but I think you've nailed alot of the high level issues.

So, some very granular notes have been added, primarily to do with increasing readability.

Its really looking great! Jamie

I like this theme - it is clean and the colours are comfortable on the eye. A few enhancements might make it more useable.

The text of the latest updates is fairly unreadable. I would lose the italics under the portfolio pictures too.

It is unclear what the icons above each portfolio image are for.

Not sure if it is possible but it would be great if after the user had liked a post (which I realise now is what the heart is) that there was some visual feedback rather than the text which is ugly e.g. colour in the heart red.

Once you get onto the subpages there is no obvious navigation back to the home page. I realised after a while I could click on PostupTheme in the header and footer but it took me a while. I'm afraid users often need a bit more direction than this. Bread crumbs would be sufficient or a home icon in either the header or footer.

Search should go higher up.

I like the social media icons - although wasn't sure what they all were.

I like greyed out subtle design of the post tags on the portfolio pages.

I realise that a lot of this might be configurable by the user in the theme. However it is worth making your example as usable as possible I think!

Might be worth working on the contact page.

Hope this helps Lisa

Hey Bryant,

Your theme is coming along very nicely. Overall it's a very lovely design, and looks really great. You do have some areas that I think need work. But it's a very nice concept.

Here's my thoughts...(in no particular order)

• The page loads a bit slow. If you're using a bunch of PNG images, consider where you could instead get away with a JPG, or even better for performance - just use a CSS style and progressive enhancement (ie - use advanced CSS3 styles and don't worry about browsers that don't support it as long as it degrades gracefully)
• Your drop shadows under the images look way too black. They look like they're set at 100% fill and opacity. Consider droping the opactiy down to 40%. It will look much more subtle, but that will be good - trust me. :-)
• Your social network icons should have some type of hover state, even if you set the opacity to like 70% for normal, and on hover change it to 100%.
  • I see you've used a mix bag of rounded corners and normal edge corners. I think you should go all out with rounded corners. Specifically the Latest Updates sidebar and the search field.
  • You could accomplish a lot more with CSS that you are doing with images. (i know I said this in my first point, but it's worth noting again) For example, your twitterbacking.png image could be replecated almost identically with CSS3 in moder browsers (border, border-radius, background-gradient, etc.).
  • Also, you're using some extraneous markup to accomplish your twitter list. It appears you have divs just for the background image, where instead you could just apply the background image to the list items for the ul#tweet_list.
  • Your intro tagline is moving down to three lines on my OS X browsers (both in Chrome and FF). Here's a screenshot: http://cl.ly/37i9 Especially since it's a theme, you should account in the design for variable lengths of that portion.

Keep up the good work.

I think overall site looks awesome. Easy to browse and everything well organized. Here are few things which i thought could be improved:

a. Logo i think can be improved, its pretty basic. Doesn't hold the attention at all.

b. Sidebar headings use text shadows, which is although great idea, but i think they are too dark. So try reducing the shadow colors a bit.

c. Twitter feed uses a very dark blue background, which takes attention away from the main, content. I think if you can use some light colors there or not use background at all, that will make it look better.

d. Search box, i think also need a bit of touch up.

But otherwise great design!

I just have bits & pieces: the Contact Us  & Login are not aligned vertically to centre. I have noticed you are applying padding and on my Linux machine it does not look sharp. I like the fact that you have done the portfolio theme "right", too often we see here elements "just placed there" but yours uses subtle gradients to make it top notch. When I hover over the portfolio images, the color does not do it for me, perhaps darken the background and do the font color in a very very light shade of blue? The latest updates to the right are too close to the top border and I believe the text should be centered. How about doing the tabs of "all posts", "featured" etc through JavaScript to show off your skills and make it a tad bit more responsive? The hire me button does not stand out that match and the overlayed information neither. You are using an icon for logging into WP but "About" and "Contact" are less important? Why have Contact and Contact us? Why is global search below tweets?

Nice theme you got. I suggest you improve the contrast on latest update. The text is not so readable, brighten the colour a bit.

This design has appealing colors, a minimalistic look and the use of typography is great!

The social networks items on top are a must have nowadays and they look good as well.

The only aspect i would change would be the font used in Global Search, where it says "Search..."

This is a great design indeed.

I loved the contrast between the dark blue and the greyish texture background. The types being used are great as well.

I would change only one thing: place the search bar on a more visible area, perhaps under the Social Network Icons.

:)

I really quite like the cleanness of this design, and the textures/colors etc. I did have a bit of a problem with the font though, perhaps you should change it

Very nice work! But, the comments/responses section's text is difficult to read. Black & blue aren't good...

Its a nice design, I would agree with some other reviews on your concept/design though that you should move the search box to under the social networks icons and on the social network icons you should defo use tooltips to tell people what the social network name is.

I like the concept and style of the site, however just one thing, the text in the panels needs a differnt font and a different contrast. Imagine someone with poor eyesight or partially sighted trying to read it. The style is innovtive and has great potential otherwise!

Overall very neat and crisp site. But the layout is very common among portfolio sites. Hence there is little novelty here. But it serves your purpose to showcase your work and engage your audience.

Overall

The overall design, layout, and colors are mostly nice. The proportions seem right, and the colors are both pleasing and neutral enough to highlight the visual content of the site.

Navigation

The navigation is somewhat problematic. The main navigational controls (the buttons) lack sufficient content between background and text. Also, for what I would call the "detail" pages - those that result when you click on one of the pictures, it is not clear how to get back to the home page. I know that I can hit the browser-back button, but another clearer way back would be helpful.

Purpose

It is not clear what the purpose of the site is. I can view your work, which is nice, by the way, but I'm not sure what else I can do other than tag and favorite things. What if I wanted to use some of your work commercially? What if I wanted to contact you in order to commission some work? I see the contact button, but I the overall purpose of the sight is not clear to me. I suspect that some of this will be cleared up when some real text is added. However, you may want to consider a more engaging first page which has minimal visual content with some explanatory text to draw the user in to view the rest of your content. Perhaps, just highlighting your latest creation(s) and discussing who you are, what you do, and how you came up with your ideas(s) would be a good start.

Legibility and layout

I pointed this out a few times in the numbered call-outs. The navigational controls and other comments are tough to read because of the poor contrast and small fonts. You may consider using some different colors - possibly complementary to increase legibility and to ease navigation. This should be in the navigation section above, but try out different colors to highlight the different sections of the first page. They should probably stay fairly neutral to ensure that your visual content is highlighted as it should be, but play around with some colors here: kuler. Also, try using different colors to more clearly delineate the parts of the page: the banner, the content area, controls, side panel comments, etc. Do the same for the "details" pages. Kuler will let you select base colors and create attractive palettes.