[sander]

Hi guys,

I just discovered this site today. Been a graphic designer for a while but tend to work in isolation - with critiques only from clients.

Looking for comments + critiques on my current portfolio.

http://www.medusiform.net/

Feel free to be as brutal as possible, because I am really trying to improve.

-Sander @ Medusa Design

[Megaton Cat]

Flippin' sweet. Love the illustrations, and the design is pretty neat.

[Dusteh]

Really like the meta flyer. Some nice work there, website is cool too. Can't think of anything to knock really except for the fact you haven't made the switch from table to CSS design yet.

[hit-squad]

cool site and some nice work - only thing i prefer is for the site to be centre page

[forbes]

Love the portfolio- great work there, but i think you could jazz up the website a little.. still, your portfolio speaks for itself

[liquidfusion]

Not bad, but please remove the flash thing top right, its distracting to the rest of the page!

Nice illustrations, even if they are pretty 'trendwhoreish'

[transparent_opacity]

There are elements in the farenheit 111 poster I've seen in the Freewave Book

[Limbo]

the pink spiral thing is..?

You know what Medusa was right? a mythical beast consisting of part pre-menstruating woman, part serpent, part plastcine with black mamba hair. I see no link. Maybe I am too old.

The flyers are pretty good start to your portfolio.

[stickmus]

Pink spiral thing needs to carry on going, really anoying the back forward motion.

Posters are nice though.

[pgo]

Nice work. The posters are good...

...but, to be honest, I'm getting sick of that trendy style that seems so ubiquitous these days.

[dtrenz]

very nice. clean + simple.

i agree that the flash spinner should be continous in one direction.

my only other criticism is that your portfolio is a bit bare, and only really shows your illustration... not web design, etc.

also, if you ever do more than flyers, you should section up your portfolio into illustration, web work, etc... so we don't have to scroll a ton to get past the flyers.

[stylin328]

Nice work. Nice illustrations

[sander]

thanks for the comments everybody. the flyers are all at least 1 year old, so if they appear to be responding to last years trends it's because they are. they're all event flyers so they're meant to be eyecatching on a temporary basis. never seen the 'freewave' book before, but we all know design doesn't exist in a vaccuum

for the next redesign i'm probably going to try and keep the whole site 'above the fold' with some kind of flash image viewer.

unfortunately i am a terrible programmer, hence the tables.

comments about the flash anim taken. i was never really satisfied with that anyway! i think i'll ditch it.

thanks guys, you are extraordinarily helpful. I'll try and get some new work up soon.

[Megaton Cat]

I don't see what's wrong with the posters...they're very visually appealing and in style. People whine about old stuff being too dated, and new stuff being to whore conforming...so what new revolutionary style are these people themselves creating?

Keep on truckin' sander.

Don't see anything wrong with using tables - you're an artist obviously, so just do what you do best.

[pgo]

Why should you conform to a style at all? Shouldn't design be representative of the content and the visual identity be representative of brand values?

Sometimes style is appropriate. Sometimes it's superficial fluff. And when you see that "trendwhore" style, it tends to be the latter.

In general, not in reference to the OP's work. Don't want to seem like I'm panning them.

In your case, most of them seem to be for club events - electronic music, drum n' bass, etc. Which makes them highly appropriate (in the same way top_buzz's stuff is appropriate for his audience). Which is why I said they were good.