[parenteau]

Hey there...

This is my new design. I have pretty much made it a micro site to represent myself as an artist & designer. I have not put a great emphasis on the portfolio aspect. I plan on using my blog for that. That is the next project... make my blog match my site. However... these are the things I focused on here.

1. I wanted it to be social.

I figured that if I spend time on a web 2.0 platform updating my profile through a browser or my phone... I wanted it to update my site. So, I worked with the Flikr badge, the Last.fm badge (to check out what music I have been listening to)... popurls.com and delicious.com feeds as well... (Magnolia is dead that used to be there). Twitter as well.
This is a way for me to keep the content as fresh as possible.

2. I focused on Validation and web standards. I wanted to make the site tableless.

3. I also wanted to play around with jquery. The home page and the contact form have some jquery behavior added.

Please let me know what you think.

I spend time designing for work and clients so often... I don't ever get to do this for myself.

I am pleased so far.

http://michaelparenteau.com

[BetaWar]

One issue with the site is the spacing on the slider at the bottom, in IE 7 it gets to the point (towards the 3rd and 4th) where there is a noticable offset that cuts some of the text and images off.

I also noticed that there were a few JS errors on the contact and about pages.

Other than that it looks pretty good.

[no2pencil]

I wasn't able to find Dream In Code under the list of sites (links) under "Sites I Love".

[parenteau]

no2pencil, on 8 Apr, 2009 - 06:24 PM, said:

I wasn't able to find Dream In Code under the list of sites (links) under "Sites I Love".

Oooops....

It is in the footer, under the list of sites (links) under "Sites I Love

sorry about that. I thought for sure it was in there.

[capty99]

yeah man really like it --

couple things :

1) my eye doesn't really have a spot it falls to when it opens the index up. i think increasing the contrast on the twitter feed will at least give the user a starting place instead of jumping around all over -- and then work from there

2) same sorta thing with the arrows to move between 'slides' . i didn't intuitively pick up thats what was going to happen . since there is a horizontal nav at the top i wasn't expecting to have that secondary navigation in there and wasn't until i wondered why my mouse was flipping to the link pointer that i clicked it. some sort of highlight on those, or something to show there is more there would be nice.

thats it and its nit picky but i think i've said it before your stuff is stellar.

[nightchoir]

maybe this isn't what you want, but i find it helpful to separate certain elements of what you do into separate sites. for example, i have a separate site as a design/web portfolio as opposed to my "fine art" portfolio. other personal projects and things go onto a different website. to me, this feels more professional than one all-encompassing personal/business site. perhaps it's just the social networking that throws me off.

overall, though, solid work. out of curiosity, is the phish print a screenprint? the way the border is makes me think it might be a lithograph from stone, but the image seems too uniform in tone for that.

[parenteau]

Yeah!!!

Thanks for the replies, I really appreciate it!

The site, since it is my name, really was intended to be a place that shows elements of my personal and professional areas of study. My background is in fine art, I am a web designer / developer by profession... and I do a lot of social network / media marketing & Search Engine optimization... so, I am really all over the place. However... I do plan on integrating the site better than I have with other sites I create for specific elements (fine art & profession) and plan to make this site more personal.

The one thing that I am getting into is, the site can be updated quite a bit from my phone using the feeds from the social networking sites I use. I am listening to last.fm on my phone... bookmarking sites I find to delicious & popurls... snapping shots and adding to flickr with my phone... and using twitter from my phone. So, it is really current.

The Phish image is a silkscreen of an illustration that I did for them that they published in the Phish Companion 2nd Edition.

I will take those details in Capty!!! I agree, the site could use a bit more contrast and the nav elements on the index page for sliding the mid section could use some nifty rollovers... may actually redesign that section as well... I have a lot more to show. I really wanted to change things up and play with jquery a bit... it is my first time

Thanks again everybody!!!

This post has been edited by parenteau: 14 April 2009 - 10:54 PM

[forest51690]

In the slides, there is a block of text, and to me, it's a bit straining to read all of it. I hear that serif type is easier to read, so consider using a serif font for that.

Also, in the cloud graphics at the top, I see a little 2-pixel black line on the white clouds. It's repeated with the graphic.

I am using Opera Internet Browser.


but overall, nice site. I am impressed at your workmanship.

[firebolt]

Yes... When you "restore down" in IE (I think it was fine in Firefox), the footer stuffs up. Its not locked in and it moves.