The Ace of Spades, A portfolio in the making Options

[Firiath]

http://theaceofspades.t35.com/

That's the basic design so far (and I haven't added any pages yet).
It looks too plain to me ._.
Any ideas on what to do to it to make it have more... oomph? xD

[deteam]

like it, but your right really plain.

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Subliminal

[Tomates]

I agree, i like it too but it could use a little more.

[Mikeplyts]

It's not bad, but the image looks pretty choppy to me. Also, I'm not too fond on the colors and shades you used (it's a bit tacky). Honestly, if this were mine, I'd probably try a new concept. However, I do like that idea of using serifs as the little "bases" for the spades.

[brooklyneast05]

yeah i think the idea of connecting the spades to the type is a good idea, but it's not well executed, especially the second spade. it's really choppy and awkward where it connects. if you're going to have some big typography as the main focal point of a layout, you really need to put a lot of attention into detail. i don't know if the font you chose is the best, maybe it is for the theme, but your treatment of it isn't good. it's tracked in way too far causing the letters to sit awkward against each other and cause a lot of tension. some letters are pushed up on each other, and some are are sitting further apart.

click to enlarge

where the T and H come together is awkward, especially the fact that the T sits lower on the baseline. there's numerous fixes for this (this also applies to the T and F in portfolio) the easiest way is to change the spacing instead of jamming them together. i don't know what font this is, but good fonts, made by professionals, use what's called ligatures to fix some of this. a ligature is made by a typographer for the sake of fixing these issues that come up when certain letters are placed together. i believe you can turn off ligatures in the adobe programs, but they should be on as a default i think. sometimes type works good really close, like the A and the C on ace, works pretty well, but then the C and E? not so much.

i circled the spades at the bottom because they have a weird choppy edge on both sides. detail is key, and i would spend a whole lot of time on it for something like a portfolio, because as a designer your attention to detail is going to say a lot about you.

besides that, i would just rethink color in general. you're type says one thing and your color says another. what does light blues have to do with cards? the color is clashing with the theme. i think most people think of black or red, or rich colors when they think of cards, since those are typically the colors used on them rather than pastels.

the roll overs are clunky and the whole navigation is sitting too close to together vertically imo.

Reason for edit: Thumbed. - Mike

[Blyat]

I actually really like how its plain and simple
some areas jc showed fix
but I like it a lot imo

[Firiath]

I'll fix the stuff in the header
&& change the color scheme
The reason it's light blue is because I felt bad sticking to my normal dark greyscale palette xD
Maybe a black and dark red/maroon?