Part of building our brands is to look at other peoples personal websites and review them. See what tips I can grab and what I would do differently. So firstly I will start by looking and my classmates and then move on to other personal websites in general.
Im going to try and be as honest as I can be and reflect on how each part of the website makes me feel.
So starting with Antonio Maggi Madrid
Im not a big fan of his point of entry, his banner looks very GamZerXxX Geocities circa 2001.
The worse part being is that they don't fit with Antonios completed project tonally at all. These generic white action game protagonists (well, The Prince and Connor while are not white, they still are very whitewashed) are nothing like the interesting game styles he has on show in his "stuff I made - Video games" section.
Using these games or other things that fit with his design motives will vastly improve his site. He gos on to talk about what games he grew up with and enjoyed in his "about me" and "interests" subtitles, but none of these are featured in his banner. These two sections feel like they say the same thing. After I read the second one I feel like I have wasted my time, I really don't care what book he is currently reading, even more so when its part of his normal inline text, I automatically think that he is no longer reading that and I'm getting dated information.
This technical skills image is nice and clean, but it makes me think that these are the only programs he knows how to use.
Next, we can see his links to the rest of his site and boy is there a lot, 15 pages.
I don't understand why the stuff I made and projects are two different sections made up of 8 different links. If I was just looking at his site, I would click on "stuff I made - Video games" then leave. It's very cumbersome.
Clicking on stuff I made shows us everything in these sections in one long list, complete with a massive paragraph about each project. Each project also seems to have an unedited video, while a video is a nice touch, the fact they are just screen captures makes it feel unprofessional. TILT ‘N’ CHOP has a video that has been put together nicely but lacks any sound. Sadly the 3D art doesn't showcase his work very well at all, I'm not sure if he wishes to go into this career, but having unfinished assets and the finished ones poorly displayed really hurts the website as a whole.
Projects are in fact a dev blog, they really do offer some good insight into what he is doing and how he is doing it.
Articles has one post over its four links. "[GAME ANALYSIS] WHAT’S WRONG WITH ROGUELITES?" is really well written but reads like a youtube video. Its length is troublesome, too short to go in-depth, but too long to be a quick read, taking around 6 scroll wheels to reach the bottom. The links to opinion and how-to don't have anything in them and makes it feel like no care has been placed into the website.
His blog, this has one link so it feels better to click on it. It leads to one post, that mirrors this one. A break down of other peoples websites.
And finally his contact page. Its pretty standard all in all, with links to his social media.
One thing I don't like is that his e-mail me button asks me to open up my desktop mailing app. I honestly do not know anyone who uses this. Another thing is that he has his e-mail as a copy and pasteable link. From my understanding having your e-mail like his encourages web crawlers and increases your chance at spam and dangerous e-mails. His link to his git has a photo of him, it would of been nice to see him on his own site.
GOOD:
The man really knows his stuff and what is here is really strong, it's just hidden.
BAD:
The site feels both empty and cluttered at the same time. His layout dons't really work with the amount of content he has, leading to the viewer to having to hunt for information he wants them to see.
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