It looks good!

Easy to navigate and very intuitive layout. Work is charming and interesting to flip through.

A few notes:

-going to homepage will generate a random image from your portfolio. This may or may not be a good idea, depending on which image I end up seeing on my one (and only) visit to your site.

-I like the parti icons under the academic work field. I wish each category had icons. As it stands right now, the navigation on the left is not as consistent: 'Sketches' and 'resume' are click-able links; 'Academic work' is not.

-'Blog' page appears to be broken on latest Firefox on a Mac. It works fine in Chrome. The rightmost column of information (about, etc...) ends up in the middle of the screen (superimposed over the image) in Firefox.

-Sketches look harsh (especially compared to rest of your work). I would make them much smaller on screen. The one you used in your blog looks much better, size wise. Ditto to how they appear in your PDF portfolio version.

-Clicking on resume goes straight to PDF. Annoying for some people (like me). I would recommend 2 icons allowing for either HTML or PDF version. (DWG version if you're serious about architecture).

-Portfolio link is confusing at best. I though I was already in your portfolio? Clicking on the link prompts a PDF download again. I would rename "Portfolio" to "Portfolio PDF version" or something more clear.

-Contact link takes me to one of those fill in the blanks forms. Those are useful only if you want to conceal your actual e-mail from weird people. You do not. Otherwise, I find those types of forms annoying. A clean sheet with a click-able e-mail is all you really need.

-You have icon links to your linked and facebook profiles. Linked in makes sense, although I would clean up the language a bit. Structural design is not one of your specialties. Trust me. The other link, facebook... I would just not have that. Knowledge that you like Finger Eleven, Knocked up, and Deadliest Catch does not help you all that much.

Overall, you have the right idea.

Hope my comments help :)

I agree with Steelstuds comments, and I can second the issue with blog text in firefox.

Overall, it is a nice site.

Thanks Steelstuds,

The blog is a work in progress still, since it is getting into some php/html/css stuff that I haven't had experience with. I'll see what I can do to fix it in Firefox. I'm sure I missed something in the code. Upon looking at it, it looks like as long as I do an absolute or fixed position for it, that should take care of it.

Good call on the sketches, and looking at it again I definitely agree. Luckily that is a very easy change.

I like the Resume and Portfolio ideas. I'll make those changes.

On the contact link, I've actually had other people say that they hated the mailto: method because it opens up Outlook, Mail, etc... What I will do is add that method to it as well.

I think I'll change the menu to have icons for it all since for example I can do pictorial sketches in one, and then diagrammatic/analytical sketches in the other, and then do pictures of different places/details/etc...

I can see what you mean with structural design on LinkedIn, but my education at IUPUI was in architectural engineering/technology so I can actually design a structural system that works and do all the analysis if needed. I love it when people complain about structures class, I just tell them I had to do it with calculus. I think what you are getting at though is that structural is for the engineers and that might adversely effect me in terms of types of job offers etc that I might get.

Agree on Facebook, I don't even like Finger Eleven all that much any more. I'll take that one down.

I've had people say they love the random image as well. I might just need to edit them down to just the main money shots.

Thanks again.

Ok. The Firefox issue is fixed. It was just an issue with the position code. I'll work on some menu changes in the morning.

small point: the people get distracting in a lot of your renderings; sometimes the red/orange people work, but sometimes not. also, the same sketchup people over and over bug me (but, that's just me)

agree on the sketches--I'm thinking leave them out (or maybe leave out the ones w/ people---again, these are distracting)

nice work though

Thanks achensch. I appreciate your comments but disagree. I'm one of those where I believe to get the true feeling for a space you have to represent it how it is used. Also they aren't sketchup, its silhouettes, but I know what you mean.

I've made some revisions and added some changes based on critiques here. Thanks for all the help everyone.

Josh -

The site's got major issues...at least on my computer.

In firefox (v3.6.8), the horizontal movement of the images wrong...when I click on the 2nd thumbnail, I see half of the 2nd and 3rd images, rather than the 2nd image...the discrepancy gets worse as you go...by the 4th thumbnail, I just see white because the images have all moved past their display area.

I checked it in IE (v6.0), just to see if it was better there, but in IE, the display area for the images is way down on the page...completely off the bottom of my 20" monitor. The thumbnails are arranged vertically in IE, while they're horizontal in firefox. The good news is that the sliding effect works fine in IE.

I built my own website...a couple of times now...and sympathize w/ what a pain it is to get everything right on various browsers/OS's.

IE 6 has a bunch of glitches...google the issue, and you'll find lots of html snippets that you can put in your site to work more like it's supposed to.

Yeah I think it is an issue with the script. Sometimes it will do that on my computer, but when I reload the page it is fine. I'll have my friend take a look at it to see if he can fix it since I don't know my javascript.

As far as IE6.0 I assumed most people were using 7 or 8. I made sure the layout works for firefox, safari, chrome, and ie7 and 8. I figured that would cover most of them. I'll take a look at the script and fixes for 6 when I get the chance.

Thanks jc.

josh..

i would agree that it's good to show how spaces are used..but most educated architects would know that already...i understand that you want the people to be abstractions...but when you then have 15 people in a rendering it starts obscuring rather than enhancing your renderings. i would use real people if i were you..especially when the color of the abstract people are close in color to the surfaces of your building. i really like the 'segregation' project, but i really dislike the red people in the renderings though...the whole rendering is realistic..why are the people red blobs? if they're going to be abstract then maybe grey or white so they're not so prominent.

also i think your resume can easily be condensed. there's no reason to have a two page resume at this point in your career...get rid of the fluff and focus on the meat...i'd get rid of 'other skills' and your high school experience...i would incorporate the 'other skills' into your description of when you actually used them under your jobs or something.

anyway..i like the site overall..the pics aren't lining up at the moment for me on firefox...good luck

I love all the new icons on the left. Reads much better. You somehow broke the slideshow feature, as observed by others.

I have to agree with the comments above about the red silhouettes. An wether you want to admit or not those silhouettes are sketchup people.

Other than that - nice work

Difficultfix: they are PSDs that I desaturated and made solid colors. Its just a preference of mine. On the week long competition we just completed I made them white (but it fit with the composition of the board).

Anyway, after not being able to get to it for a week, I have fixed the slideshow and added a caption feature as well thanks to a script I found and was able to execute. I think I have the IE6 position fixed as well, but I have no way of testing it.

Josh Mings Architecture

Slides are still broken, but in a different way. Click on second image, then click on first again. You get a random slide.

Caption feature doesn't work well with captions longer than 3 lines.

On the slides, its just the way the script does it. To go back there is a menu that pops up when you hover over the large image. I'm not versed enough in javascript to change it, and figured that broken is better than the previous one.

Which captions are you talking about? All of mine on the pictures are currently one line. Are you talking about the menu ones?

yes the menu ones. I do remember slider working well at some point. What happened?

Ah...must have changed it when I changed the font size. I'll switch it back.

And to be honest I have no clue. It might have been something with adding the blog. I completely reinstalled the script the previous version to no avail, so I switched to this one.

You should do whatever it takes to fix the slides. Even the navigation menu that pops up over the image doesn't work if you try to go backwards.

I agree steelstuds. I'm going to see if one of my friends can look over the code to make sure everything is ok. For now, I made it so that the navigation menu is up full time as sort of a work around, even though it isn't quite right.

Thanks for all of your help by the way.

I like it....simple and elegant (except some of the technical problems).

Just a side note...one of my friends had a warning from NCARB for using 'Architecture' term on his website because he was not an architect. He had to change the terminology used on his website. So just be careful, because if somebody reports you, they will be coming after you!

Thanks poop (love the name).

I'm hoping that the Academic Work heading right underneath the logo will show that this is an academic portfolio versus a firm site. Easy change if they do say something though. I may just go ahead and change it up to head off any potential action (even though right now I'm 50/50 on practicing in Europe when I graduate).

I believe I have fixed the slideshows. I changed the transition, and in Chrome, Safari and Firefox the only issue that I saw is that when you get to the last image and go back to one before it, you have to click twice; which is acceptable for me, since most people would naturally do that if it didn't work the first time.

Update: All problems with the slideshows have been fixed. I downloaded an application called Visual Slideshow that allows you to customize javascript slideshows and writes the code for you.

I've also put up my work from the All-School Design Competition in which I earned an honorable mention, and have posted several blog entries.

If anyone knows how to fix the IE6 position error, if you could help point me in the right direction that would be great.

Thanks again for all of your help everyone.