[K.Brown]

I feel that I'm being pretty unprofessional with this, but here goes:

I'm designing my portfolio site and I'm hoping to enter into the professional web design world...I'm having some trouble, though.
I'm not happy with my design. I feel like it is lacking consistency/purpose and it feels unbalanced.
My idea is to use the tabs under the "featured area", if you will, to toggle information. Like expressionengine.com.
I would like to know:
1) What you think of the design. (Please don't say, "Looks good.")
2) How I can improve.
3) Is this totally unprofessional of me to ask this in the first place.
4) Do my concepts make you think, "Amateur."
1) This is my origonal idea.

2) More of what I want, but too bland.
3) So, I added some color.

4) That felt cramped, so I expanded.

[illvibe]

Everything looks so big. Is this a site for the partially blind?

[K.Brown]

Its because I'm drawing on a pretty high resolution...

[K.Brown]

ooops...this thread should have been posted in the "help me" section.

@illvibe, what resolution are you using?The page width is 960px and the height of the "focus" section is about 300px. Is that really that big?

[Noah]

im at 1600x1200. the design is kind of big. overly large text. i think the first two designs are better. its hard to tell with half the page though. overall, i think the designs need more cohesiveness and uniformity.

[wheedwacker]

He means that the elements are big, not the overall width of the website.

[neotic]

Yeah...kinda what I was thinking...looks great to me!

[K.Brown]

I most definitely agree that it needs more cohesiveness and uniformity!