[patricklynch]

Sarah Federman - http://sarah.codes/

Sarah Drasner - http://sarahdrasnerdesign.com/

Assume whoever looks at your portfolio is going to scroll from top to bottom first, get a first impression, then _maybe_ click through things later.

So build for the question "What do I want people to see if they scroll through my site without clicking on anything?"

[GrinningFool]

> So build for the question "What do I want people to see if they scroll through my site without clicking on anything?"

The home page of the first site could literally fit all of its quickly parseable informational content with no scrolling required and without being too dense (on a desktop - minimal scrolling would be needed on mobile).

Does anyone really enjoy looking at seemingly-random large background images while trying to pick out the isolated islands of text as they scroll - complete with shifting brightness/contrast? I used to think not, but it's becoming so prevalent I begin to think I'm in the minority.

Pictures convey a lot of information, but (IMO) people don't want a lot of information when first visiting a place - they want an overview that they can digest quickly, and they want to be able to drill deeper for more details. Images.

Pictures also take a lot more time to process - it was three passes through the site you linked before I realized that the pictures were actually showing (through pictures of devices...) examples of her work - I was there for information, but didn't realize some of that information was png-encoded.

Some of her work looks quite good - but if I weren't paying extra attention for purposes of writing this, I would have never seen it.

[federcheese]

Hey, you guys found my old website! It's in sore need of some upkeep, I haven't touched it since the week I built it when I was in school :(

I understand what you're getting at re:scan-nability and info denseness, but I believe that is what a resume for. I'm not trying to use my website as a resume, I'm trying to establish a digital presence and show off my work. If I weren't a designer and front end person, having an online resume might be the goal, but this is a portfolio.

It has many problems that I hope to fix, but using visual aides are not one of them :) Anyways, thanks for taking the time to look at it. I adore Sarah Drasner's work too, she's one of my favorite people!

[GrinningFool]

Thanks for the reply and the additional context. I hadn't considered that from the perspective of why you're showing what you're showing. Naturally design is visual, and difficult to show effectively using small chunks of text.

(But my feelings on scroll allthethings remain unchanged :D )