Web Design Workshop #31: Namanyay Goel
tuts workshop

Web Design Workshop #31: Namanyay Goel

on Feb 15th 2013 with 25 comments

Web Design Workshop is our regular community project where we ask readers to submit their work for your friendly, constructive criticism. It’s the perfect way to learn, offer opinions and have your own work critiqued! This week, a personal portfolio..

Rules of Engagement

Play nice! We deliberately select work which will benefit from advice and pointers. If you can’t be constructive in your comments, don’t. Other than that, offer any advice you can give. Feel free to link to examples and images which back up your points.

The Design

Web Design Workshop #31

Redesigned my website for 2013, thought my previous one was getting old and boring. I took a new approach with the minimal design elements, and the image based design. I tried to have as less text as I can, and focus on simplicity and minimalism. Would love any critique I can get from my fellow web designers :) Namanyay Goel

Looking for constructive criticism on your own work? Submit it for a workshop – most but not all submissions are published. Be patient though, there could be a queue..

 
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Hi there! My name's Ian Yates. Welcome to Webdesigntuts+ :)  

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  • pmaitland

    I like the overall style, clean, deceptively simple and it all works together. Although I am not personally keen on the Hello World bit being right aligned, that’s purely my personal taste. About the only thing I found jarring is the difference in height of the two service panels, I would have made them have equal height, but again, that’s just a personal thing.

    • http://create-n.blogspot.com/ Namanyay Goel

      I’m having all my titles right aligned, so I thought it made sense for ‘hello world’ to be too :)

      That’s a great point on the two service panels! Fixing immediately! :)

      Thanks for the comment!

    • http://create-n.blogspot.com/ Namanyay Goel

      Fixed the service panels, and changed the work area as well! Thanks for your critique :)

  • http://www.facebook.com/harli91 Ivascu Madalin

    I don’t like the transition from the services area and the contact,this 2 areas look bigger then the work area, i don’t like how this is proportioned

    • http://create-n.blogspot.com/ Namanyay Goel

      I’m actually redesigning the work page — I’m sure you’ll like the new one!

    • http://create-n.blogspot.com/ Namanyay Goel

      Hey Ivascu, take a look at the site again. Revamped the work area!

  • Jake

    Overall, great job. In my opinion the header navigation feels separate from the website it just doesn’t suit the rest of the website. I like the background image idea but the blurred images you’re using look a little out of place, especially the services/contact sections because there is no break between the two. I personally would blur the images more because the current ones really make me want to know what they are. or I’d use one big background image, but that’s personal opinion.

    I think you should also show you’re work off a bit more! make the work tiles bigger with less border/margin between them, really sell your work you’ve done so far.

    Keep at it, it’s coming along great :)

    • http://create-n.blogspot.com/ Namanyay Goel

      Hi Jake, thanks for the critique!

      The header navigation seeming ‘off’ makes perfect sense – I am now redesigning my work page, and I have included similar headings for it’s title. The work page is bigger and more elaborate as well.

      I like the idea of blurring images! I’m gonna make sure to implement it :)

      Thanks once again for your amazing critique! :D

      • Jake

        I really like the new work section, such a great idea. Also the font/colours/spacing is excellent. Now that you’re incorporated some more orange/grey into the design the navigation suits imo perfectly.

        No problem! Glad to help :)

    • http://create-n.blogspot.com/ Namanyay Goel

      Hey Jake, have revamped the work area since. Check the site out again! :D

  • Rhianna

    When I open the site, every thing seems so large. I would imagine with the design being so minimal that the size would correlate also. I just feel like it is “in your face” big. Very clean and the colors are modest. The designs in the work tiles overrunning the borders look like a mistake almost without a distinct border because the tones of the border and backgrounds are so close. Darkening and less opacity would help break that. There’s a misspelling in your description (marketing). Overall, nice site. Pleasing to look at.

    • http://create-n.blogspot.com/ Namanyay Goel

      Glad you like it Rhianna!

      I’ve made the site keeping all sorts of users in mind – there are some people who cannot comfortably read the small font sizes found everywhere on web.

      My content was small as well, so I used big font sizes to offset that ‘problem’.

      Hmm. I just noticed the border error on images, thanks for that! Will look for a fix… Thanks for pointing out the typo as well!

      Thanks for the awesome critique! :D

  • http://twitter.com/carabellokc Cara Bell Creative

    Namanyay, the overall look and feel is very clean and calming. Good job. I am not a fan of any of the right align text. I realize it is unique, but when it comes to web design, that’s not necessarily a good thing. Users’ eyes start at the top left and read left to right, top to bottom. When you have to look for a heading because it’s not where you expect it to be, it’s easy to get lost in the page. When you find a heading on the right, it is very unnatural to look for the content that belongs to that heading on the left. The eye should be able to flow naturally down the page so your work does not go unnoticed and so you don’t have anyone leave frustrated because they don’t know how to use your site.

    I also disagree with Jake, I think the images should be slightly less blurry so we can see a little bit better and relate to what you do (like an office space or something). But I like the effect.

    Your work is really good, so you might want to consider one large thumbnail instead of 4 small ones. This would also help the user see your work first and not have to piece it together from the thumbnails.

    • http://twitter.com/Chaz_Klein Chaz Klein

      Agreed Cara, I mentioned in my post earlier about the right aligned text and the natural movement of the eyes and how it can cause frustration and tension.

    • http://create-n.blogspot.com/ Namanyay Goel

      Thanks Cara!

      Aligned a lot of text to the left. Some is still right aligned though — I’m aiming for a zig-zag pattern.

      Hmm, about the bluriness, I’ve kept it blurry intentionally, so if the images resize awkwardly, they don’t affect things much.

      I’m happy you like my work! I personally prefer the 4 images. I’ve added higher resolution images, mostly 800 * 600, which should be better. Let me know!

      Thanks once again :D

  • http://twitter.com/Chaz_Klein Chaz Klein

    Namanyay, overall I think you have done a wonderful job of designing this portfolio site for yourself. You had a specific vision for it with a simplistic approach in mind and you have achieved just that. Only a few minor things I would like to note that I think would finely polish your design. I can see that you went for a metro/flat design which I really love. All of the elements on the page are flat except the header text (the drop shadow specifically). This causes a little bit of tension and I think you could really benefit by taking the same font and styling that you used for the “Services” and “Contact” headers and use it for the main header text. Also I think that the overall design is a little bit right heavy; naturally the eyes fall from left to right to left in a downward diagonal fashion and your design tries to pull the eyes to the right and keep them there. Something subtle you could do that would counteract this is alternating the aligning of the header text. Align the “Work” text to the left, leave the “Services” to the right, and then “Contact” to the left. This will allow for more natural eye movement.

    Overall great job though!

    • http://create-n.blogspot.com/ Namanyay Goel

      Glad you liked the site Chaz, thanks for the critique! :D

      Changed the hero text – Hope you like it better!

      I’ve also aligned everything in a zig-zag way, please let me know if you prefer it this way!

      • http://twitter.com/Chaz_Klein Chaz Klein

        Ahh yesss Namanyay that works much much better on the eyes! =)

        Also, I do like the new header text much better! Great job with responsive so far as well.

  • Vincent

    Namanyay, I have a quick suggestion for your awesome website.

    I think you could take the background images of the sections and add them through css.
    At the moment they resize with the browser making them non-proportional and weird-looking.
    And something that’s not super important but would be nice if you added som bigger images for bigger screens and retina screens. I’m using a retina macbook and the images are really showing bad pixel resizing.

    And i agree with Cara that you could use one big image for your works since you can’t really see anything in the small ones.

    Other than that, great work! Really like the Services-section.

    • http://create-n.blogspot.com/ Namanyay Goel

      Hey Vincent, glad you liked it!

      I’ve blurred the images enough so the details aren’t visible – Hence non-proportional shouldn’t be much of a problem. I’ve added background images through HTML, since the CSS method wasn’t widely supported, and was causing lag.

      I’ve changed the images to have 800 * 600, and for some, 650 * 400 samples. Let me know if you like it!

      • Vincent

        Yeah as you say, the resizing may not be a problem after all.
        It’s just that sometimes, not all the time, you could consider background-images for people sitting on i big iMac which are 2560px wide i think.

  • Richard Vazquez

    Big, Clean BOOM! Great Work! (I wounder if this is a responsive web too?)
    Keep it Up!!!
    Peace!

    • http://create-n.blogspot.com/ Namanyay Goel

      Haha, thanks :)

      Yup, the site is fully responsive ;)

  • naman34

    Hey. Two things. 1) I Agree with jake about the two images without a break looking a little strange.
    2) I think the boxes under services could use some work. They seem over designed compared to the rest of the page.

    Finally for a second, I thought this was a prank. My name is Naman Goel. And I, too, am a web designer, and front end developer (also back-end). I had posted my work a long time ago. Never showed up.

    • http://create-n.blogspot.com/ Namanyay Goel

      Ohai Naman!

      Added a border between two ‘pages’ — Hope that fixes the strangeness?

      Agreed about the services box. I’ve now made them simpler.

      Oh, haha, what a co-incidence! ;)