While I found the Ricardo Guerreiro site less visually appealing than some of the others I saw, its structure and presentation of information works well for what I hope to accomplish with my own homepage. I have decided to create a site that houses examples of the various training projects I have worked on in the last several years. The nature of these projects lends itself to the sort of categorization found on this page.
One thing I especially liked about the front page here is the behavior of the rollovers/popups. We've all become accustomed to images that "do"something when you mouse over them -- e.g., mouse over a "photography" icon on an artist's site, and a sample photograph appears. On this site, though, a different image is revealed each time you mouse over an icon -- you can keep mousing over the same icon and get a different result each time (up to a point, obviously). For me, this was engaging; it make me play about on the home page for much longer than I typically would have.
The home page also includes a brief message from the artist, speaking directly to the visitor. Additionally, there is a bio link, which leads to a brief blurb written presumably by the artist himself. I like the fact that the bio reads more like an introductory letter than ad copy. I think that approach makes sense for my site as well.
The internal pages are very well laid out, with a grid of thumbnails at left and a blowup of the selected image at right. The cursor turns into a magnifying glass when you hover it over the blown-up image; clicking blows it up still further. My training pieces would work well like this -- although rather than just having them enlarged, I will probably endeavor to show more detail in some other way (perhaps a case study).
It is very easy to track where you within the site, and the navigation is extremely obvious and minimal--which is important to me.
A couple of things about this site that I am on the fence about:
1) The use of motion is perhaps overdone. Every time you go back to the home page, you have to wait for the icons to fly in. Also, there is some sort of rippling, sunlight-on-water effect on the right-hand side of the page that never stops; I find it distracting and unnecessary.
2) The links page is mysterious to me. Is he linking to competing designers? Designers he is inspired by? A bit of explanation would go a long way here.
3) Some of the font is too small to comfortably read. Easy enough to fix that.
And now, because it was so unbelievably hard for me to pick one URL, I have to offer this list of also-rans. I am limiting myself to five.
burkedesign.ca -- a really charming and well-designed (albeit too long) introduction and nice presentation of information
thinking-clear.com -- gorgeous, gorgeous design but a bit abstract, navigationally speaking
holihandesign.net -- great use of color, movement and sound
mushroommultimedia.com -- good use of imagery to support the company name/identity, but way too fancy for me to think about imitating!
crowleywebb.com--very unique (but not totally effective) navigation, good design, snappy copy