Chris Garrett

Let me be the second to commend this guy on a job well done. I think we may finally have broken the '5' ceiling again ;)

Simple, clean and beautiful :)

Good work Chris

Virginia

Looks like: http://www.manipulation.com

wow. black background and white border, yeah they have a whole lot in common (rolls eyes).

man I thought this one might break the cap, hope i didnt jinx it, or are people being stingy?

That's really strange, I came across this site for the first time earlier today.

Wonderfuly design, and their work is even better.

WOAH! I posted on the forum yesterday for some fedback, I never epxected to be featured.... Thanks so much guys!

I don't see what all the hype is about. It's definitely a nice site but nothing inspiring or special that I can see. Just my opinion - not trying to hurt the designers feelings I'm just not too excited about this one.

I have to disagree with David, this website is very tastefully executed. There aren't that many examples of websites that can pull off white-on-black successfully, but Chris' seems to manage that well.

I'm not overly impressed either. The logo, navigation and main content box seem out of scale to me. I'd like to see the logo much bigger. I'm not a fan of of the small content text. Also there is little in the way of symmetry from top to bottom -- but maybe I'm too used to seeing footer text finish off the end of a page.

I must commend Chris on his most excellent work on Indie Anthems (http://indieanthems.com/) however!

Totally agree with David, there is nothing special to this site, I can't see why it should be featured.

"I can't see why it should be featured."

"...a nice site but nothing inspiring or special that I can see."

Yes, surely we are all still learning and should strive to develop our designer's eye and learn to recognize the features of effective design. I'd wager that's one reason that Stylegala exists.

But comments like those cited above really don't have a place here. Better might be to ask why the design is effective or what features allow the design to succeed. There are plenty of excellent designers who frequent this site who would surely be happy to explain and expound.

Great job Garrett, the site's simple and elegant, and for that reason, It hink it should be featured. I think it shows more of a movement towards simple design...

It's great under the hood. The design didn't blow me away, but still deserved to be featured for well-used mechanics. It's current score (3.8) is very fitting.

Very simple and straightforward. The most uncomplicated yet aesthetically pleasing portfolio I've seen. :) Two thumbs up! :)

I'm surprised this site made the featured spot on Stylegala. I find the design to be unimaginative, unoriginal and underpants.

Thanks for ALL the feedback guys. It's all been beneficial and at this early stage in my life, I am only 16, I can hopefully use this to build better sites which will hopefully be better received.

I think this design is simple and elegant, and that all of the design elements, like the little flower logo and the layout work together harmoniously.

The only critique I would offer would be that the navigation is a little too simple, and that perhaps making it stand out a little more design-wise would make it flow with the elegance of the rest of the site better.

Either way, great job, and if this guy is only 16, and already this good, I can't wait to see what the future holds for him.

Chris, don't get yourself down listening to these people arguing about what is 'stylegala worthy'. Obviously they can't design anything good enough so they tear other peoples' work apart.

Your site is awesome, especially for a 16 year old, so keep up the good work

Wow! You're only 16? And you say this on your site:

"... I ‘ve been working in new media for over 4 years now ..."

Man, were you born into a new media family or something? I find it amazing that a 12 year old got a job in a professional atmosphere. If you did though, kudos! That's pretty cool if it's true.

Upon retrospect, that comment had a negative overtone. I meant it to be positive that if you have been involved since that age, that's really cool and you should be proud of it. Not many people get that chance :).

When I say working I mean for myself lol. You know, the sites which you spend hours making in Frontpage and are laden with tables and dodgy javascript...

I really like it. The simplicity is refreshing to see, after so many sites doing the "wicked worn" look or the "shiny aqua button" effects everywhere. I have a few suggestions that will hopefully be helpful:

1. Make the background images for the main area taller, fading to black, and positioned...

background { #000 url(/img/image.jpg) no-repeat center right; }

That way, when the text is resized, the image stays centered, and gives the user more to look at with higher font sizes.

2. The 3 smaller images are sometimes links to other pages, but when further down in the site structure, they "dead end." - If you provided some indication of when they are links and when they aren't, this would help. That's just a knit picky suggestion though, and isn't that important.

3. "Bandwidth Limit Exceeded" - Somebody please hook this guy up with a better hosting plan! Email me if you need some help, 'tis the season.

Seriously how did this site make it on the gallery?....

I know this kid is only 16 but a site is a site.

I like it.

Though if the white borders were a darker shade of gray it would be much easier on the eyes.

I'm not as harsh as somebody here, but I don't think it has a place in the gallery. If something was to be added to the gallery, it should be some of his web-work. And was this site just picked up from the forum?

16!!! The boy's the 'Wayne Rooney' of the web dev world!

Tidy site all in all - will be interesting to see this young'uns progress.

It's good to see constructive comments on this one, even with some helpful suggestions - good stuff!

Its nice but nothing more.

Seems nice to me, why not have it in the gallery?

There isnt enough in the gallery in my opinion.

Theres some nice work on the web portfolio page.

He could of made the navigation more interesting rather than just text links, but the logo and colours are good and it's not easy to make a dark background look good on a site without things going 1990.

OK, might not be exceptional, but its still good quality in my opinion.

Love the look of the site, but you might wanna switch out the serendipity feature... awfully similar logo... ;-)

Ohh and if you don't like the site don't rate it or rate it lowly... or is this not a democracy anymore?

Keep up the good work chris - best of luck

Age is not important. The Internet established itself well after 1996. The popularity of games (Halo,Quake), everybody has Internet nowardays. Plus it is a part of the education in secondary school. This is a site from 15 year old: http://www.motiongerm.com/whisper/main.html

Internet is still developing!

I think the black background blends well with the rest plus the graphic talent is there! The style used suits webdesign for sure. Maybe developing your own style will still have to come but sure is a good start. I love flowers but does it reflect who you are? The writing style? It is too corporate and *we are all dynamic* kind of style. Take a look at this sort of writing: http://uptonic.com/capabilities/

Explain how you approach any future clients.

Also try to learn as much you can like Studio 3D Max, Flash, Video authoring, XML, php, mysql

funny how as soon as everyone finds out the designer is 16 they start offering up unwanted advice.

i was under the impression that this is a design showcase, for finished, polished sites, not for works in progress. as such, we should treat this as a final piece and not throw in our two cents. it's one thing to say 'i'm not crazy about the color scheme,' but to tell the designer what to do with his site is crazy. you so crazy, i wanna have your baby.

it's one thing to say 'i'm not crazy about the color scheme,' but to tell the designer what to do with his site is crazy

Eh?! I tell you what would really be crazy: actually just saying 'i'm not crazy about the color scheme', and then not expanding on it at all. Comments should offer useful information to the readers, not just: 'I don't like blue' or 'I think it isn't very good', or equivalent. You can't exactly go away and improve your professional practice with these vague subjective mutterings as your guidelines.

I, for one, want to read how folk would do things differently. I would want suggestions and explanations / reasons as to why people do / don't think a site is successful.

Lovely, simple, proffessional and easy on the eye. For personal reasons I like to have "next and previous" buttons in portfolio, so i don't feel like i am leaving it.

Nice website, especially for someone so young - good job all round, the code is quite tight too. THumbs up.

I wonder if the aesthetic effect could be improved by removing the white border so that the flower contrasts more against the black background?

7 from me - does its job, does it well.

"funny how as soon as everyone finds out the designer is 16 they start offering up unwanted advice."

No one told him to get married huh?

Ah, I just noticed something on your site, Chris:

Your top-left logo for the site has a slightly different green background color from the background of your site. I'm using OSX.10.3 on Safari, and I can clearly see that there's a difference in the color of the two. You might want to take a look at that.

I used Apple's DigitalColorMeter tool and discovered that the background of the image has a RGB value of (00, 05, 00) and your logo has a RGB value of (00, 03, 00). So it's deffinately not just my eyes.

hey i happen to be the first david. the one who commlemetented the guys site. but i must say that everyone who is saying that the critisim is out of place or should be left somewhere esle. or that the critic should give some clearification of why they dont like it is dead wrong.

there are no instructions here saying if you dont like it offer up a reason. the place for that is where garret originally put up his site, in the forum that is where the feed back should be.

this part is a ratings part, just the fact that there is a rating says to the user that i can say hey i love it or hey i hate without needing to go into why.

its just insain to me that you people cannot handle somebody saying that they dont like something. instead of attacking that person why not offer up a reason why the site should be here in your own opinion.

remeber that word? OPINION, everyone has the right to his or hers and no one should be able to tell them how to use it.

The reason I don't like it is because: I recognized the logo as a standard shape, the thick white borders. And I don't think he managed to get the 'minimalism'-look, there is no details - and that just not what I am used to here at Stylegala, you've raised the bar high, and I like that.

And, did you guys just pick this one up from the forum? As I've said before, why not feature his work, which is much more pleasing, and done, than this site?

Ah, I just noticed something on your site, Chris:

"Your top-left logo for the site has a slightly different green background color from the background of your site. I'm using OSX.10.3 on Safari, and I can clearly see that there's a difference in the color of the two. You might want to take a look at that.

I used Apple's DigitalColorMeter tool and discovered that the background of the image has a RGB value of (00, 05, 00) and your logo has a RGB value of (00, 03, 00). So it's deffinately not just my eyes."

This is because of the gamma values! imagery looks darker in Win on lighter on Mac

Though Safari can read these *extra values* if you specify this in Photoshop. But still it depends on how you save your image.

It's nice to see that December *might* surpass November in the # of entries. Might.

This is a nice site, the only killer is the small text. Seems to be very typical, upon looking at the portfolio. At least for once, a site without rounded corners is getting a good review. About time.

Ah c'mon stylegala!

1. The flower is just chosen from a 'flower-font'. So he didn't create it.

2. The navigationdesign just doesn't belong on the site

3. They are just a couple of white boxes...

This is not worth stylegala-gallery material imo!

I have a shorts printed with identical flowers! Maybe it is not a font, but the flower was copied. Anyway, I can't access the site! Well, about the author's age, i also have 16, in my country there are several technical high schools that teach the general of programming and internet, as we don't have any union or regulation, it is common to find "web designers" with less than 17y in South America.

I can only talk about the miniature: I didn't like this green with black background. Actually it is not green, it is yellow dark (#7f8b49), this color is readable in CRT monitors, but in LCD or monochrome, it can be illegible.

The text is too small to read.

For a sixteen year old, it's awesome really, I am 26 and I am pretty envious, makes my own CV look awful!

What makes you think he is 16 years old?

If he is, then on that basis i'm very impressed!

I think that there are some who have already commented that need to get their priorities straight. People do have different views than others, but unconstructive comments like "The text is too small to read" or "It's nice but nothing more" do nothing to improve Chris's fantastic work.

Age is most certainly not important. I'm 13, but everyone else in the blogosphere couldn't care less. It's not often that someone comes along with a beautiful and simple site like Chris's. When you start offering unwanted advice to those who are already very established in the design field, it's like offering piano lessons to a child prodigy.