Site Focus: Jon Brousseau

All too often in the web design world, usually from a client perspective, web sites must have flashy animations, glossy buttons and other “Web 2.0″ style graphics. It is often overlooked that some of the most beautiful designs are the simple ones – usually created by a charming colour scheme alongside some kickass typography. In this site review I take a brief look at Jon Brousseau’s portfolio.

Typography

When you go to any new website, the visitor should instantly be told what the website is or what it is about. Jon Brousseau does this extremely well – and if you miss this intro, I think a trip to the opticians is in order. From the off you can tell that Jon is an interaction and print designer. As you go through the website, the headings are set up correctly and perform a level of hierarchy. But to me, it seems that it has been done in a very thoughtful way. The title “some work samples” is a lot bigger than the individual project titles, but the project titles stand out a lot more, showing more importance – purely through colour.

Layout

After the introduction, the layout is simple. Large portfolio screenshot, a brief summary of the project and a link to the live version (if applicable). This is purely a portfolio site, so attention must be given to the work. If this were a freelancers website or agency website, it may be more worthwhile given more information about the project.

Extras

You may notice that when you scroll down the page, the portfolio item screenshots fade in. A subtle effect, but it gives the page so much more life.

In the opening paragraph there are some tooltips that appear when you hover over any of the three links. I do feel however that the only link that may need a tooltip (or further explaination) is the ‘experience’ link. The other two (view work and get in touch) are very clear and do not really require extra information.

Conclusions

This site is very minimal but has so many hidden gems throughout the design. An excellent portfolio site for showing a few select items of work.

Rating: 8/10.