Personal website

Hey Emma, I have to agree with Luke on this, those illustrations don't do your work any justice! And I think you would be better off just having a page holder in place, with a contact me option, until you figure out exactly what you want to do. I personally, don't like the whole jump to behance thing, if you want a good CMS that's free to use and customise check out silverstripe.org...

Thanks Luke

It's a shame you don't like the illustrations though :(

I've been a fan of Jonathan's work since before I even went to art college. He was doing strips in Tank Girl Magazine and Deadline back in 1993 when he was dead young too along side Jamie Hewlett who did Tank Girl obviously and Gorillaz for Damon Alburn. He's one of the few illustrators asked to sign his signature on the wall at the MAD offices in the States. He's just finished doing one of the Christmas windows for Selfridges with his girl friend the Felt Mistress (Louise Evans). He's also been featured in the last three editions of Computer Arts magazine and Computer Arts Projects Magazines. Seriously if I could have drawn like this straight out of college, I'd be a very rich person. His work is deceptively simple like South Park. His quirky humour and ideas shine through his work which is all very distinctive.

He did these illustrations of me, my penguins, my bags and a lot of broken iPhones as I'm well known for being an iPhone killer - he says 02 shops have e-fits of me in the stores now. I haven't included the iPhones. He did them all as a leaving card for me when I left the Guardian.

I came up with the idea of doing a paper doll type thing that you can dress up and his illustrations really fitted that idea for me so I asked if I could use them and he said it was fine. I also loved the birds which Warwick did and asked him if I could use them for a custom twitter bird.

But I think you're totally right on the navigation and the jumping to behance thing and I'm going to work on both of these issues.

Thanks again :)

IHMO this 'Friendly, professional designer for web and print' is not a bad tagline. You want users to have emotional reaction to your site and to understand in seconds what you do (who you are). Links like Portfolio, client, skills, about me are too generic and are on so many other types of sites (finance, music, architects, etc,

Michael you really are a star. Going to work on this kind of idea although instead of Friendly professional designer for web and print going to put the Portfolio, Clients, Skills, About me in that font stacked so will be super simple. You always help kick my brain into gear properly to sart getting ruthless. Thank you for taking the time out to look at it for me.

IHMO this 'Friendly, professional designer for web and print' is not a bad tagline. You want users to have emotional reaction to your site and to understand in seconds what you do (who you are). Links like Portfolio, client, skills, about me are too generic and are on so many other types of sites (finance, music, architects, etc, ect)

Oh I like this (-: Although I'm still not sure about the logo even with more contrast.

@Lisa. My feeling exactly. These fonts are not legible enough.

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In terms of who it's aimed at. It's aimed at Creative Directors/Art Directors of large media corporations. Basically I get recommended for work by word of mouth by people who have worked with me in the industry and then they just want to be able to look online to see a visual back up to the verbal recommendation. It's definitely not aimed at small businesses or people who want me to build sites for them. It's just to showcase design work as I really only work for large media companies. People have very specialized roles so designers design, front end coders do front end, back end coders do back end, etc etc. Up to now I've had nothing online really and tend to just send through a pdf portfolio to anyone if they need to see work. Thanks again for your comments. Report Abuse

Emma, Jim is 100% right - Portfolio is the most important thing

Hi Lisa, Thanks for your comments. The reason I'm using someone else's illustrations is because as a designer I commission photographers/illustrators all the time - I just put it all together with nice fonts, colours etc and come up with the ideas in the first place.

This particular idea was what Aaran mentioned - it was going to be drag and drop so you could dress the cut out doll of me and use that as the navigation. Jonathan's illustrations which he did fitted that idea perfectly. I put the white outline around them and the dotted line etc so designed them into the page.

But I had to get something up this weekend and used what I had already partly because I was so attached to the idea but it's just not working - it's been really useful to get the feedback to confirm this for me.

Thank you also for your lovely comments about my work. I do love design and am a total workaholic. I did actually turn down work though for Christmas week as am going to take a week off. :)

In terms of who it's aimed at. It's aimed at Creative Directors/Art Directors of large media corporations. Basically I get recommended for work by word of mouth by people who have worked with me in the industry and then they just want to be able to look online to see a visual back up to the verbal recommendation. It's definitely not aimed at small businesses or people who want me to build sites for them. It's just to showcase design work as I really only work for large media companies. People have very specialized roles so designers design, front end coders do front end, back end coders do back end, etc etc. Up to now I've had nothing online really and tend to just send through a pdf portfolio to anyone if they need to see work. Thanks again for your comments.

Hi Emma

Ta for the award ... you blasted me through 1000 ... Hadn't really thought I'd ever get there a week ago.

Maybe just go really simple one page with your name, address and a piece of work on it.

Anyhow I had a interesting interview today ... so maybe I will start being busy too. I've got a young family so work/life balance is my thang. Thinking of that better get to bed (-:

I l

IHMO this 'Friendly, professional designer for web and print' is not a bad tagline. You want users to have emotional reaction to your site and to understand in seconds what you do (who you are). Links like Portfolio, client, skills, about me are too generic and are on so many other types of sites (finance, music, architects, etc,

No worries Lisa, it was a well thought out review. How could I not have awarded it?

I too have a young family and it's horrible right now not seeing them as much as I want to. I used to have the perfect work/life balance but circumstances mean I have to work full time right now.

Hope your interview went well and thanks again for the review.

It's funny you should say about the drag and drop on clothes as this was my original idea and what I was hoping to end up with but lack of time meant I have watered down the original idea just in order to put something up but I think I ultimately knew it didn't work.

Even my behance profile hasn't got half like enough of my work on it. I was going to put full version coming soon and I think just a basic holding page would work better.

I think also that I got too attached to the visuals for the original idea and have found it very hard to let them go but to get a site which functions well I think I'm going to have to :(

I just love these illustrations Jonathan did of me. I've loved his work even while I was at college - he did strips in Tank Girl magazine and Deadline alongside illustrators like Jamie Hewlett (he of tank girl and Gorillaz fame). He's just finished work on a Christmas Selridges window display with the Felt Mistress. But maybe it's best to showcase my own work primarily and keep this for something secondary.

Thanks for your feedback :)

OMG! You are a genius. It's so bonkers how I can look at the CF header bar for instance and see how to fix the issues on it or see immediately how to fix someone else's layouts - even on my own work for clients I find it mostly really easy but I have had such blocks on my own site and I knew it wasn't working but it's been in progress in a million different forms over the last year and I haven't been happy with any of them. I absolutely love what you've done. Thank you so much. :) :) :)

That's an awesome mock up Haider! Nicely done...

@Aaran thanks :)

@Emma thank you for message… I was skimming the design and I want to tell you that I like the illustration most in your design because of its uniqueness and I think you should use such a great artwork.

I want to share the experience of designing my own website that I started designing in the mid of 2008 and ended up finishing in the end of 2009. After working 1½ year I was not sure about the design and I just published the latest redo of that time. I think it’s become a “Do and die” situation when it comes to designing our own website :D

Anyways look forward to see you coming up with something great...

Going to try to carve out some time this weekend to have a look at it as it can't stay in it's current state for too long. I certainly haven't sent out a global e-mail yet to tell clients my site is updated as I knew it wasn't working. Concept Feedback is really brilliant.

I might actually find a serif to work with the sans of my logo font - I originally chose Avant Garde to work with Null as the x heights and glyph widths are similar so they would compliment each other.

I'm glad you like the typography - I know others have commented on not liking the logo because of legibility issues. I like the fact that Null is slightly illegible - it's a logo and I like the shapes. I have emma simpson design in the tagline to help clarify meaning. The font is beautiful and really well designed - the curves balance each other beautifully and the proportions are great. It's not necessary to be legible just to make a nice shape.

It is a nightmare doing my own site - I am generally not precious about my work or get overly attached to particular ideas etc - I'm really ruthless but on my own site, I'm getting bogged down in details and losing focus of the ultimate purpose.

Thanks again for your help, insights and taking the time to do such a great mock up. Basically everyone is in agreement the navigation is pants. You and Michael have managed to come up with very clear ways in which I can now move forward which is totally invaluable.

I do love Jonathan's work and I think it helps make something with a very clear identity and character although partly I have wondered on doing a very plain site along the lines my good friend and colleague, John Henry Barac has done here: http://johnhenrybarac.com/ I think ultimately though I'd like to put some of my personality into a site.

Thanks again :)

very nice comp Haider.... and a great review as well!

@Emma, I'm a big fan, and I also enjoy reading your in-depth reviews. The folks that left reviews on this page along with many others is what makes CF such a great resource for those in our field. looking forward to seeing next revision... :-)

I can't wait to see it,,,,,,,, :)

Thanks Ionut and agreed on the footer - it's not finished. Basically I had a meeting yesterday and had to have something online so corners were cut just to get something up. Not ideal but across the board the attention to detail and finishing in my work is good and the plan is to rework this as soon as I can.

Good point on the resolution issue. I'm on 1920 x 1200 but maybe because I'm on a mac my browser doesn't open full screen so I don't get huge white space issues. My idea now for the redesign will take care of these although have in mind now something using things Michael has said but there will be more white space rather than less but hopefully it will work better

I can't wait to see it :).

Thanks Oliver and I do appreciate your comments.

Please don't take this personally but those fonts are just terrible. Whoever did them should be held to trial for font abuse and banned from being able to make, own or kern fonts for at least ten years if not life.

If I used these fonts I could kiss any work goodbye. They are abysmally awful and purely should be kept for flyers for country fayres produced in Microsoft Word. They're worse than Comic Sans. Dafont is great but needs to be approached with great care - there are some good fonts on there but most need so much work to make them anywhere near usable. Font Fabric and the like are much better resources for free fonts.

I take no offence, just had a few links to the particular font style I thought might fit your website. I do agree they are crap but I just wanted to give you a sense of what I meant.

Good luck with the re-vamp

I list top of google if you type in emma simpson design - my personal website comes top and in fact I get the top 5 spots for my various online activities. I alt tag my images very carefully and the title of my site alone means I rank highly.

Thanks and agreed on the navigation

I just scanned more comments and see you have declared certain ideas will never work. I hope you haven't given up on the best parts.