Website review: Aeiko

Aeiko

Aeiko is the personal portfolio of artist/designer Pete Harrison.

First of all what I like most with Pete's site, is that everything is clean and easy to read. You can see straight away on the main page thumbnails of his latest or selected work, along with text links on the side for navigation to his work. The idea of latest work thumbnails is something I've worked into my site design.

Below that there is 3 sections which has his welcome message, latest tweets from Twitter and contact info. Again this is something I've added into my design.

In his main menu which runs across the top of the site, he has things broken down into categories. The designs on these pages tends to feel a little loose with everything just thrown together. This part doesn't let the site down a bit since it doesn't really flow with the main page, other than having the same header and footer structure.

One thing I would have liked to have seen would be adding a black background to the site along with the background image he is using. With my screen res the background image doesn't fill the entire screen so there is white showing on the edges of the image.

Website review: Behance

Behance

Behance is a network site for artists and designers to share work. Think of it like DeviantArt for Designers.

What I like about this site is it's a place that I can go to to get inspiration and get design ideas (It's where I found the Gaia 10 site mention below). I really like the site design in terms of ease of navigation and being able to see everything clearly. The way the content is layed out in columns is also good with the main menu across the top and the sidebar menu on the left.

I also like how the work is displayed on the main page, which shows an image with title and artist name but also categories below which the user can also use to navigate to seeing work in that category only.

My only criticism of the site is it doesn't fill up the entire browser window that a site like DeviantArt does. This makes it worse for people like me that use a large resolution monitor. My screen res is 2560 x 1440 which isn't that large now with the 27" iMac's all having that res and this site does look a bit small at that res.

Website review: Gaia 10

Gaia 10

Gaia 10 describes itself as a "worldwide community to celebrate the beauty of nature through digital art."

What I like initially with the website are the colours. The colour choices are harmonious and  they work well together. The use of a gradient background which flows into the main content area of the site is also nice touch. With the navigation menu, I like the position of it with the padding around it for the content area, which also has a darker area in the menu for the current page you are currently on.

One criticism with the design is that when there is a lot of content on the page, you have to scroll back to the top of the page to either go back or go to another section on the site. Adding a return to top button or a base navigation menu would resolve this issue.

Overall I really like the design of this site especially the magazine page. The Gaia 10 website was also a major influence for the design of my site which you can see in my mock designs below.