There are many personal portfolio sites out there, some of them are a simple vessels for images of an artist’s work, others are meant to be design pieces themselves, demonstrate the designer’s skills and creativity. The ones that appeal to me tend to have a lot of content – the ones that demonstrate good functional structure and an intuitional organization of information in addition to having visual appeal.

I like Family Different’s website and though it is not a “personal portfolio” site, I thought I’d share it anyway. They have a nice flash introduction, with their logo appearing in white dots on signature pink color. but I ran across it while browsing and I really like some compliments of their site so I decided to share. The design is all dots and thing lines – fun, playful, a bit whimsical (like the “family portrait” where each person turns into a silhouetted character), but also simple, clean, modern, stylish. Echoing the dots, the thumbnails are circular, lines (like scrolling bars) and type are hairline thing, and both visual or textual information that isn’t primary, fades into a nice grey, keeping things prioritized and uncluttered.


Elliott Erwitt’s website (www.elliotterwitt.com) is clean and simple. The grey color palette compliments his work, which consists largely of black and white photography. It neither distracts nor detracts from the subtle aura of humor and seriousness the photos project, but instead provides a simple, classy environment. The designer used drop shadows, somewhat transparent rollover menus, and white text on grey background and a small screen to create a sophisticated, clean look. Main nav. is at the top, a simple flash left/right thumbnail scroll nav. is at the bottom of the screen a vast amount of work and information is broken up and categorized under different portfolios, thus avoiding overwhelmingly long scrolls.