A Review of Online portfolio by Ben Gillbanks

Hi Lindsay

First things first, I think the background is quite nice and with some decent colour choices and transparent backgrounds could work really well. However as it is I find the layout messy and unstructured.

Some of the things I would change are:

• Make the whole header area smaller, the logo and the descriptive text. The tag line in particular is really in your face and pushes your actual content down quite low
• I would make the tab text real text and not an image, and increase the vertical padding to stop the buttons from looking a little stunted
• I'd work on the colours of the tabs. At the moment there's nothing to suggest what tab you are currently viewing. Perhaps making the currently selected tab colour match the main pink background colour would make that clearer
• The main content is too wide making it hard to scan. Either split the content into two columns (you could have a sidebar with testimonials or links to other areas of your site) or restructure the existing content slightly. For example on the portfolio template you could split things down the middle and then have 'photoshop', 'illustrator' and 'indesign' in one column, and the rest in a second column.
• The homepage isn't very inviting. There should be more padding at the bottom and a bit more 'punch' to it. At the moment the footer area looks rather unfinished.
• Add some illustrations/ screenshots of your best work. Since it's your website perhaps you should add a photo of you to give it more personality.
• The fields on the contact form could do with some prettying up. Just changing the border-width to 1px makes a big difference and, like the homepage, you should add more padding to the bottom so that things don't just 'end'.
• Add a proper footer. At the least there should be a link to your homepage along with the website name, but I would probably add some sort of tag line, and maybe a tiny illustration or graphic.