Jason,
Briefly reviewed your materials. For the most part, I am impressed. You have a clean, professional look to your projects.
In the interest of providing constructive criticism through, here are some thoughts:
The majority of your work relies heavily on the gel/aqua effect. Though very pleasing to look at, it doesn’t show that you can be diverse in your style/approach to projects. When I hire, I typically look for individuals who exhibit the capability to generate completely different styles. I would, in this instance, suggest that you try and offer samples that showcase your talents by demonstrating versatility in your designs.
My biggest issue is with your logos. Again, they rely heavily on the gel effect, but when I look at these logos, I don’t believe they will be versatile enough to apply to any application. The most notable instance would be the promotional product industry, where often lineart versions of the logos are needed for screen printing, etching, etc.
The other thing to consider is that the logos are all full-color representations. Great to look at, but you’d be dooming the client to extra budgetary expenses to reproduce them. It’d be good to show a 2-color logo or two.
Below is a link to a thread I published here in the forums a couple years ago that offers some good advice to consider when designing logos. I offer it to you as a resource, not as a shameless plug for something I’ve created.
BLUDVLZ, "BLUDVLZ’s Logo Manifesto" #1, 3 Aug 2003 8:23 am </cgi-bin/webx?14/0>
The last thing I’m offering to you is just a bit of troubleshooting… I noticed that when you click on your portfolio button, none of the links work. Might want to address that.
You’ve got some good looking stuff, Jason. No doubt about it. I just think you need to showcase a bit more variety in your work, as that’s what employers are looking for. You’ve got the talent, no question. Just show off a bit more of it.
Good luck,
BLU
Jason,
Listen to BLUDVLZ. He’s a regular here, and exceptionally talented <waving to BLUD>.
Peace,
Tony
Hey Tony! How are things?
Dandy. Good to see you again old friend.
got a website to look at BLUDVLZ?
Hi Jason!
Was going to say a few words about your work, but first I read BLUDVLZ’s reply, and he basically said the words needed to be said.
You have a great talent and I liked your work a lot. Take it a step further and doors will open up..
Thinking about contacting you for logodesign for my business.
Tace care and keep up the good work.
Christer S
Hi Jason,
Please take anything I say as positive criticism.
I notice you use lots of wide letter-spacing. Having some old school typesetting sensibilities awakened recently in me, I feel in general your wide letter-spaced text could use some fine tuning with more visual balance.
IE; the Butterfly poster "Printbeauty"-the PRINT lettering at the top.
I saw the RIN as a unit with the P floating slightly to the left and the T floating slightly to the right.
To my eye I would try moving the P right a hair and the T left a couple of hairs.
Balancing out the positive and negative aspect of any letter-spacing is a tough and a very subjective art, but when done right it is such a thing of beauty. Large point sized wide-spacing becomes particularly difficult because of the large gaps (negative spaces) between the letters.
To train my eye I created a clip file of the best wider-set logotypes and headlines I could find in high quality, full page, upscale fashion advertising. (Vogue is good for this kind of advertising.) My reasoning. Vogue is a very well established magazine with a history of very fine (albeit conservative) editorial art and content…
If a Vogue ad is selling a $300 bra to very wealthy clientèle, then everything in that ad should say top-quality plus…from the concept to the super model to the headline/copy writing, etc., to , our concern, the lettering.
Most of the upscale advertisers have turned to the top-dollar agencies, who in turn use top-dollar typographers for type.
These expensive typographers have had years of experience and have built great reputations because the old-timers with their experience can still squeeze real typographic art out of the latest typesetting technology, no matter how much the technology claims it can do on its own.
Also read the older graphic design and typography books. I checked out all of the type books that my library had to offer. They helped correct some of my long held misconceptions and enlighten my ignorance.
Letter-spacing/kerning (and all the other aspects of graphic design and production) becomes less of an issue with experience. With what I try to practice today I am ashamed at what I gave my clients at the beginning of my career several decades ago.
Humbly and imperfectly,
artguy
Tony,
Glad to hear you’re doing well. Don’t get to post here as often as I would like, except on the occasional day where the workload is a bit lighter than usual. I’m on baby watch at the moment. My son (first) is due any day, now.
Ottz0,
My company’s website is <
http://www.allegorymarketing.com/>. Take a look, I, too, am always looking for constructive criticism of my work and feedback on what people like, or what they don’t like.
Blud: The highspeed side is blank?
Jason:
This isn’t specific to the design elements of your site, but I wanted to mention the need for good grammar, punctuation, etc. I believe these are essential to one’s credibility in this business.
There are a few corrections that should be made. For example:
". . . local company’s and abroad."
"The awards that I have won proves . . ."
Best of luck to you.
-larry
ID.
Yeah, funny huh? Two seconds after I post, my web guy comes in and tells me we’re having issues with the server.
Keep trying… I’ll post back as soon as he has it up and running.
It’s back up. Might need to clear your cache first before viewing.
