Analysis of existing websites/portfolios.

Starting with sites that are free to use (collections of portfolios grouped under one web address), I took a quick look at carbonmade, figdig and deviantart.

carbonmade.com;

figdig.com;















deviantart.com;















These three websites are pretty similar, being designed purely for people to create a portfolio as easily as possible and for free (although each site also has an option to pay for extra features), Carbonmade has the most options for customising your profile page, whilst deviantart has the least (at least on the unpaid version), overall I think I'd go for carbonmade over the others I've looked at, if I wasn't going to get the site hosted under a domain myself. (As an aside I wouldn't reccomend deviantart for anything, its badly laid out, ugly and absolutely jam-packed with users all clamouring for attention, it is the myspace of folio sites.)

Individual websites (on the internet);

gettheglass.com;

This site is an amazingly animated game designed to encourage people to drink milk, it even made me learn a little bit about why milk is so good for me. Granted it isn't a portfolio site, but it has inspired me in my own work (this is where some of my more ambitious ideas originated)

jamfactory.com;

A fantastic website displaying the works of Gavin Strange, it is well laid out, interesting and the dude has a hell of a lot of work, also there are a lot of neat little mouse overs, although with my limited abilities in flash I think I'd prefer my site to be a little more simplistic.

jessewillmon.com;















Another portfolio site, this time named after the designer, it shows all of what they're up to (assuming it's up to date of course) and has a link to all of their work. It's nice and simple and you get a clear idea of the designer's style as soon as it loads.

m1-design.de;















I'll be honest, I don't speak Danish, but this site is fantastic (looks wise, and I enjoy the bizarre layout), despite the irritating music (which you can thankfully switch off), I think this site would have influenced my ideas a fair bit more if I understood any of it.

okaydave.com;















Probably my favourite of the bunch, this site is obviously very personal to Dave Werner, as you can see when you find the easter eggs of him singing/rapping about various aspects of design, it seems that simplicity is the key when it comes to designing a portfolio (at least looks wise, if not in coding), so I've got a good idea of what to do with mine.

Pikaboo.be;















Once you get past the interesting background and look of this website, it's really not all that great, it's easy to navigate, but the work doesn't really inspire me. I'd say this site shows that a decent layout makes all the difference when it comes to displaying work.

sidlee.com;















The "agency of the year" has the simplest website, I think this says enough.

sectionseven.com;

Another simple looking site; this one takes quite a long time to load, which could be an issue if the prospective employer had a list of agencies to look through before choosing to contact any, it has a simple mission statement which you can see with a mouseover, and is very easy to navigate, I also like the way it's almost book like, which is something to look into.