Sam Hulse { portfolio } stay hungry.stay foolish

I’m writing this from my brand new iPod Touch, its pure awesome! I’ll post some pictures later on today once I’ve had a little play around with it. First impressions, this is incredible.

Finally my iPod Touch has been shipped. I should get it between 26th Oct - 1st Nov. I’m kind of looking forward to it now, after all I ordered it around 2 weeks ago and I’m kind of getting impatient.

It should be worth the wait though. I’ll post pictures when I get it. Which reminds me, does anyone have a wireless router kicking around that they don’t need?

The SantyDJs website changed a little, so here is the original layout created by me.

I stumbled upon this interesting article on A List Apart. The results of a survey they conducted in April 2007 of people who make websites (close to 33,000 people answered the 37 questions) have given some interesting results, well worth a look at.

The results can be found here (.pdf) and the actual article (A List Apart).

At the moment I want to focus on lighting, but I’m still taking on a couple of design jobs so if you need anything doing just let me know. I miss doing lighting and being on shows so hopefully something will come of the enquiries I’ve made these last couple of days. Unlike in many sixthform colleges, I have to do work experience - so I was thinking about either getting into a theatre or a gig venue of some kind and hopefully if I do I’ll make a good few connections.

In other news, I’m a little annoyed. With £1GBP now worth $2.03616USD, as British we’re being priced out of the market. Some of the best design comes from Britain but we’re being overlooked, simply because of price. On the plus side, though, it should be a good time to buy from the US? Well, actually no.

Say I wanted to buy Adobe Creative Suite 3 Design Premium (which I do), in America I would be paying $1799USD which works out at around £850GBP; yet the UK price for the same software is £1655.58. In USD terms that’s $3365.62, almost double.

Adobe CS3 Design Premium contains:

• Adobe InDesign CS3,
• Photoshop CS3 Extended,
• Illustrator CS3,
• Flash CS3 Professional,
• Dreamweaver CS3,
• Acrobat 8 Professional,
• Bridge CS3,
• Version Cue CS3,
• Device Central CS3.

Recently I bought an iPod Touch straight from Apple. It cost me £269 (near enough $550), the exact same thing in America $399 (roughly £195).

I’ve had several conversations this past week with people from America and Australia who are looking for people to do work, and wanting British designers, and simply can’t afford it. Not because they’re poor, far from it, but for the fact it’s so expensive over here to pay for labour.

So at the end of the day, we’re paying pretty much double for the exact same goods and we’re getting f*** all in return.

Update: Ben Briggs sent me the following interesting article about Adobe’s pricing.

I’ve got 2 weeks off college now, so I’ll finish off a couple of web design pieces I have to do along with a bit of college work. It’s a well deserved break though. Hopefully my iPod Touch will come during the holidays so I can have a play around with that before I go back to school. I’ll get a couple more articles up while I’m at home these next few weeks which will hopefully bring back the visitors I lost due to not having the internet.

If anyone has any questions, an idea for an article or something they want me to do an article on just let me know over MSN or leave me a comment and I’ll see what I can do.

Anyway, I’m off out now, peace out.

It took me a while to get my portfolio online. Partly because I wasn’t sure of exactly what I wanted it to look like, but most of all I was lazy; but one thing I’ve found is that it’s so helpful to have it online both personally and for potential clients - so here’s 5 tips to help you build an effective portfolio.

Design

Make something that stands out. A lot of people combine multiple web technologies to great effect along with Flash and video and high impact imagery. A portfolio is a place to show off the skills that you have and make you stand out from other people a client may be considering.

One thing you have to remember, though, is that it should be easy to find the information the user is looking for. Just because you know how to use your complex flash navigation doesn’t mean your visitor will.

Work

Being at college may seem like more of a chore than fun at times, but that project that’s kept you up all night for the past 3 weeks is a great example of something that you should include in your portfolio. Self initiated projects along with work for clients and school or college should all be included to show the range of things you’re capable of. Link to both images and the actual work if possible (ie if it’s online) - but use blank windows for external links so that visitors don’t lose your website. However, if you worked as part of a group state exactly what you did. Even if it’s unintentional, it may look like you’re trying to pass other peoples work off as your own.

Ad Free

Don’t put adverts in your portfolio. Ever. It’s relatively inexpensive to have a portfolio online, and if you’re struggling to find enough work to even cover the cost of keeping your portfolio online - chances are you don’t need one. You should be covering the cost yourself.

Content Management

It’s a lot easier to update your website using a Content Management System (CMS), than to have to upload new files all the time, which means you’re more likely to; and keeping content fresh on your portfolio is a good thing. Updating often will mean people are more likely to return to your website if there is fresh content to look at each time.

Blogging is also a great way to keep visitors returning to your website, but try not to overload the website with unrelated personal blogging unless it’s clear that you’re running a portfolio and blog.

Categorise

From time to time I get asked to do specific work, maybe just CSS work or just the graphics. Split work up into categories by what you’ve done and apply appropriate tags to make it easier for people to see your skills in a specfic area and also quicker to find a certain piece of work.

I’ve got the internet back at home now, just to let you all know. I’m also just adding the finishing touches to one of the articles I’ve written, I’ll post that later on tonight.

It’s been a while, I’ve not got the internet at home anymore, so no MSN or updating. It got cancelled because of the moving house situation - but we’re getting it put back on for the time being. It’s hard to find the time to get on a computer and update when I’m at school, so sorry for the lack of posts.

I’m about half way through in the writing of some web design articles, so I’ll post those in a couple of days once theyre done. Hopefully this week I’ll have the internet back again at home.

Sometime this week I’m going to get my iPod Touch as well, I’ll post some pictures of that when I get it. Can’t wait. Catch you all later.