
A web designer with an attitude (he did his site while drunk) - cpg
http://www.alittlebitofsomething.co.uk/
======
unshift
everyone wants to rag on the portfolio (fine, go ahead) but the long-form copy
on that page is great. it's really well laid out, easy to read, and got
probably everybody to scroll from top to bottom and read almost the whole
thing.

as someone who's unsuccessfully been trying to coax something similar out of a
designer, it's refreshing to see. my product requires a bit of convincing and
explaining, so the standard business type website with a couple pictures
thrown in isn't as effective. long copy is hard to get right and this guy
nailed it.

~~~
ForrestN
Getting someone's attention is only one objective of a portfolio site. The
most important one isn't as easy: convince people to hire you. Sure, many
people are likely to scroll down. But his "argument" isn't compelling, nor is
his work. He just comes off as difficult, arrogant, and not very good at
design.

Maybe he has potential as a copywriter, but if he's going to use it, he needs
to keep his eye on the objective for which he's writing.

~~~
singingfish
Actually this is very British humour. It may not work well for everyone, but
in Britain, it's likely to be memorable in a positive way for many people who
read it.

------
csomar
Well. This guy seems to be good at doing graphics. I like the graphics in the
thumbnail he put. I don't like the sites design in the portfolio thumbs, but I
need to get the full site URL and display it on my screen to be sure.

I like how he presented himself and the website coding. There are two points,
though:

1\. Don't use images for Text. He can use cuffon or font-face

2\. I need to click the thumb. Since the page doesn't showcase any particular
design and coding skills then I need to check the websites he made.

Why the site is good, in my opinion? Because it's unique. Good designers now
focus on clean and well designed portfolios with JavaScript effects and little
text and information. This is something unique and original. It's different.
If I want to hire the guy, then I'll check his portfolio (that's why I need to
click the thumbs) and decide.

~~~
codingthebeach
The industry's not quite to the point where you can get rid of text-as-images.
@font-face is supported in maybe 50% of browser versions, requires several
different font formats, and even if you get it to work uniformly, you still
have to deal with licensing issues.

<http://caniuse.com/#search=font-face>

I agree you should prefer text to images of text, but sometimes you can't
escape it. EDIT: And I agree that in this particular case, he could've just
used appropriately-styled text. :)

~~~
JoelSutherland
@font-face actually has pretty incredible browser coverage:

Safari 5.03, IE 6-9, Firefox 3.6-4, Chrome 8, iOS 3.2-4.2, Android 2.2-2.3,
Opera 11 ([http://www.fontspring.com/blog/the-new-bulletproof-font-
face...](http://www.fontspring.com/blog/the-new-bulletproof-font-face-syntax))

It does require different file formats, but these can be generated trivially:

<http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fontface/generator>

------
pxlpshr
Unimpressive portfolio. All too common of an attitude in both creative and
engineering oriented industries. The greatest things are built through
collaboration, and the most brilliant people are generally the most humble —
their work speaks for themselves.

The markup isn't great at all, and the overall usability and typography
choices suck. Get over yourself, millennial.

~~~
jc4p
Definitely agree with you about the usability, the giant header cut right at
the bottom of my 1600x900 screen, I had to look at the source of the page
before I realized I was supposed to scroll down to see more.

~~~
jgmmo
Your not the only one, caught me too.

------
tomelders
Maybe, just maybe, a really really talented designer can get away sounding
that cocky, but I doubt they would.

Taste is subjective, but this is my area of expertise and I'd say he's middle
of the road, so his attitude comes across as plain old arrogance to me.

I also think that web designers should be able to code, but that's a whole
other debate.

------
DanBlake
That guy sure is cocky, considering his profile consists of run of the
mill/average website designs. Half of his portfolio looks like it could be
from templatemonster.

~~~
sjs382
I recognize the one in the 4th column, 3nd row from themeforest.net

~~~
sjs382
Found it! Here it is on his site: <http://i.imgur.com/9rFCs.png>

And here it is on themeforest.net: <http://themeforest.net/item/business-
solutions/152308>

~~~
Mz
Props!

(Wonders if this feat can be replicated for the woman with the orange
background and no text...nah, probably not.)

~~~
sp332
Looks like a recoloring of a photo of Rachael Leigh Cook.

This search result is only good for 72 hours but
[http://www.tineye.com/search/8177b52b0e52f8b05e164b65ed2428f...](http://www.tineye.com/search/8177b52b0e52f8b05e164b65ed2428f4fe39820f/)
Some of the links from the search page are NSFW. If that's dead just paste the
URL of the image you want to search for
(<http://www.alittlebitofsomething.co.uk/images/folio_rlc.gif>) into
<http://www.tineye.com/> .

~~~
mirkules
It also looks like all the other sites follow the exact same HTML conventions
and styling. Some are done in PHP and some in ASP (...) Since you found
"birdrating.com" on themeforest, and since they all follow similar
conventions, it's plausible that the others come from themeforest as well.

<http://www.theoldcheesefactory.com/>

<http://birdrating.com/>

<http://www.demilles.co.uk/>

<http://buildingdispute.com/>

<http://altek-al.com/>

------
rglover
Alright, so, there are good and bad things about this. First, the good. The
copy is pretty solid and for someone with a sense of humor, it's quite
charming. It's not _too_ rude and for the person with a decent head on their
shoulders, it shouldn't upset them. The bad, however, is the quality of work
that rests on the shoulders of that brass copy. It's not necessarily bad, but
it doesn't muster up to the talk that's going on. Not to mention, you can't
even click on anything in the portfolio so it sort of makes the work
worthless. Cute, but the whole thing should be put back in the oven for a wee
bit.

------
nathanbarry
I like the attitude. Should resonate with the type of client he is looking to
get. At least then he avoids working with people who are too uptight for him
to get along with.

------
paradox95
I hope someone creates another site from the perspective of the engineer who
has to implement his outlandish designs. The first sentence: "If it were as
simple to do on a website as it is in Photoshop, I would have done it".
Followed by: "I'm paying you so do what the fuck I want."

~~~
k33n
The only "engineers" that complain about implementing "outlandish" designs are
ones who don't understand HTML/CSS/JS as much as they say they do. Literally
anything is possible on the Web.

~~~
crikli
Agreed. Back in the bad old days of table-based layouts it wasn't always
possible but in the modern age of CSS2+3, HTML5, and sweet libraries like
jQuery it's the rare case where the site can't be bloody close to the design
comp (unless you're in IE 6/7, in which case it'll still look good but won't
have all the roundy corners and font shadows and such).

------
Mz
Some of the samples are compelling and beautiful. I'm annoyed they are not
clickable.

But the rest is kind of "meh". Like I've never heard a talented, intelligent
professional whine before about this type thing. My advice: Put some of that
intelligence towards learning how to better market yourself or some such so
you make better money and have less to kvetch about.

~~~
CamperBob
He made the front page of Hacker News, didn't he?

~~~
amr
Not all publicity is good publicity.

~~~
prawn
This publicity is good publicity. Anyone who doesn't want to work with him had
never heard of him before and will soon forget him. Anyone who might want to
work with him, hadn't heard of him before.

~~~
amr
ok, good point. However, based on my experience with HN, I bet the second
segment of people you describe are under represented here. I generally see
swagger discouraged around here so a strategy like this is not effective, even
if it made the frontpage.

~~~
prawn
He's a no-name designer (not to be too disparaging) in a sea of no-name
designers. A tiny percentage of a large (HN) crowd is still going to be a
bigger audience for him than he might have got with a plain site.

I have more experience and a broader portfolio, but do you think anyone would
have reason to submit my site to HN? Nup.

If the large percentage rubbed the wrong way by this were likely to rain his
house with stones, he'd have a problem, but they won't. They'll move on to the
next topic and forget him pretty quickly.

On top of that, he will get a more receptive crowd as this moves around
Twitter and the like too.

I'd guess that big business or even medium enterprises won't touch him, but
anyone needing a freelancer or with a start-up might. Those two groups would
be reasonably well represented here.

------
lhnz
The attitude is more compelling than the work. But, in a group of candidates
of similar quality, I would be more likely to hire the guy with a sense of
humour.

------
wallflower
This guy knows how to market. He's like Zed Shaw

<http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/16/ebay-wetsuit-bear-urinal/>

------
flocial
This reminded me of the flipside of doing everything the client wants:

<http://theoatmeal.com/comics/design_hell>

------
PelCasandra
Agreed with ForrestN. I don't see anything special about this. That guy is not
a designer himself. He just mere know how to use the tools yet he thinks so.

------
ForrestN
An edgy package for conservative, second-rate work. Not surprised you can't
click on the thumbs.

------
oldstrangers
His websites look like every cookie-cutter wordpress "business" theme out
there... Horrible, to put it nicely. His "graphic design" is no more than a
few mouse clicks in illustrator on someone else's photographs.

Not even sure why we're talking about this.

~~~
jcc80
Because it makes people feel better about themselves to knock someone down who
dares to stand out. I say good for him.

~~~
oldstrangers
I wasn't concerned with his marketing approach.

------
jonmc12
tldr version: this guy is not a horse, clearly a human, but possibly has
fantasies of being a grizzly bear.

------
sistersue
I'd be intimidated to work with him (due to the snarky attitude) if I weren't
comfortable with technology stuff. But otherwise he might be entertaining to
hire.

------
pawelwentpawel
He managed to get some publicity, so I guess he reached the goal. I wouldn't
hire him though, he gives the impression that he is a pain to work with.

------
ck2
Too bad that "professional expert" website designer doesn't even follow 960px
width, the entire right side of that page is cutoff in my browser.

Maybe it's because I use windows large fonts but a pro would have considered
that. Actually it seems he uses 1000px image width so right there is a lack of
understanding that 40px makes a big difference in adapting design to what the
market will accept.

------
inarru
"And yes I'm the same idiot that sold a used wetsuit on eBay for £9,000."

Ah, I remember this!

[http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=160...](http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=160559216667&clk_rvr_id=249967894308)

very similar, but an ebay listing not a portfolio website. he certainly knows
how to copywrite in a way that gets him traffic.

~~~
craigmc
If you've ever had to do a website for a small biz, you typically find that
either a) you end up doing the copy or b) the site never gets finished (and
you don't get paid, or if you do get paid, you get to put an empty site in
your portfolio). Good copy-writing is thus very handy skill to have (and this
guy, in his eBay listing at least, absolutely nails it... the £9k bottom line
speaks for itself).

~~~
codingthebeach
Truer words were never spoken. "What's that, you expect me to produce 40 pages
of technical-but-intelligible copy for procedures on your plastic surgery
website? But that's why I gave you [insert CMS of choice here], so your people
could log in and edit that themselves...my god man, I'm a web developer, not a
medical research technician...what's that? You don't have people? Sigh."

------
burgerbrain
He lacks standout skill, but he sure has moxie and that counts for a lot.

------
koanarc
Anyone else notice an annoying horizontal scrollbar (at 1024x768) due to the
unnecessary 10px body padding?

To me, that simple detail alone belies the second statement of his copy.

------
jasonkostempski
I would have chosen the fax machine over Billy Joel in 1991. The fax machine
at least has the potential of being useful.

------
desushil
This guys website stinks, ending up with positive response from most of the
peoples.

------
poink
It's better to be controversially beautiful than universally cute. Well done,
guy.

------
jdietrich
I'd hire that guy.

~~~
rch
I'd work with him.

------
mannicken
Hilarious.

------
ristretto
Another company with an attitude: <http://gandi.net> : "No Bullshit" (they
have a trademark sign on it, but i doubt they 've actually applied for it)

------
ristretto
How come designers can have an attitude, but developers can't?

~~~
cpg
uh? Many many developers have an attitude. many many do, like dhh, zed shaw
and many others. They can be engaging.

There was something about the copy of this guy that was both repulsive and
engaging all in the same serving ... like a train wreck you can take your eyes
off.

~~~
ristretto
Not so directly: "I make programs, not shit programs, good ones, you're not
the programmer, so shut up". This guy tries to come off as edgy but sounds
more like someone who beats his wife.

