Tim Benzinger

It's laid out like a thousand other sites, but the javascript slide action on the project information links is very nice and set's it apart from others.

A good site, with nice work on display too.

Oh, what a sneaky site. I visited and thought, "oh, nice portfolio, but this site is sort of...eh." And then I made the mistake of clicking on one of those tabs and spent the next twenty minutes surfing around his site.

It's the sort of site that invites exploration without making it frustrating. Aside from a few glaring typos, I'm really impressed.

Finally Tim. Finally. :) Congrats dude.

Nice catch, John. You beat me by about 10 minutes (but I'll let go my disappointment). Yeah, I really dig this site and appreciate the aesthetic and functionality Tim brings with it. Simple, useful and beautiful. Nice combo.

John, damn you, you beat me to the review, haha! I even e-mailed Tim because I hesitated in putting him in until he fixed some stuff with his HTML, which he did almost immediately after my e-mail. But yeah, I enjoyed this site because it was simple but fun. I really think the contact form is quite funny!

That being said, while the code is generally clean and he's fixed some glaring errors I'd pointed out, Tim needs to practice his semantic coding. He's using span tags when they should be paragraph tags, or wrapping the span around the paragraph tag, when it should be other way around. Really, he just needs to get rid of the span tag altogether and just adding the class to the p tag, etc. and so forth. Once he gets the hang of using the proper tags for the proper use, I think he'll be completely on fire.

Yay, Tim!

great in firefox...pretty sad in IE.

i'm sure he's a good guy and all, but there's really no excuse for just ignoring IE like that. the site is pretty useless as is.

People still use IE?

Seriously though, great site. I checked, just out of curiosity, and the sliders even work in Opera. Very nice, slick site. My favorite part is on his resume - clicking the arrow reveals "Tim is still looking [for a job]." Somebody hire this guy already!

you guys grabbed that from http://screenspire.com, did ya ;?

He's still looking for a job because he's only 19. He's a darn good freelancer though.

BTW Tom, congrats. I got you post on Design Shack with enbreo, but I like this site more. Pretty gorgeous.

I wish you would have had more contrast with the type though. The text seems to drown out sometimes.

Nathan said: People still use IE?

Only about 90% of US users. And 95% in the UK.

I think the site works okay in IE though.

My real problem with this site is how it falls apart when you resize the text. It's because the div heights are fixed. I found this because the text size was hurting my eyes. So I guess that's two things, small text and fixed heights. Not sure why those things get overlooked so often.

Otherwise the Javascript is cool, and something I think we'll be seeing more often.

You're making me want to go ultra minimalistic again and start doing art. :) Damn you!

"Not sure why those things get overlooked so often."

funny how people expect 'designers' site to live up to sdome premade standard instead of viewing the site for what it is....

this isn't walmart.com, he designed the site the way he wanted to and you can enjoy it or not enjoy it, but please save the comments about how we all should conform to some personal preference based design stabdard for our personal portfolios. ( i'm bitter 2 hours of slepp in the last 48, sry)

P.S. cool to see mooFX has caught on... very nice portfolio.

Thank you very much for your review John. I feel honored for my online portfolio to be listed on StyleGala. I also thank all of those who posted comments, feedback, and suggestions. I take every comment into consideration and have made changes where they were needed.

Lea, thank you for all of your help! As you can see I am not "pro" when it comes to code semantics, but I gave it a shot and the more comments there are, the better I understand how I can improve my site.

Great attitude Tim! Way to stay positive and learn from the comments here. *Most* of them are constructive.

Props to Dave too for speaking his mind, I agree 100%. Just because accessibility is the topic du jour doesn't mean that every site that every designer produces is going to comply perfectly. One of the first things that I did in the review was to resize the text. And yeah, it broke bad. But then I just sized it back down and continued to enjoy it for what it was. I am still very impressed that this kid has his act together as much as he does. We do the best we can to make sure as many people as possible can enjoy our work, but in the end it is all just a great big balancing act and sometimes we choose to let the emphasis swing over to one side.

BTW, thanks to Hellsing for providing the longer character allowance on the comments, I really needed it this time!

That's a *fun* site! Nice combo of corporate and play work. Did you guys see his MySpace page? You've got a great career ahead Tim.

"and the sliders even work in Opera"

No, not in my Opera 9.0

Nice content, tho :)

The site itself is a little boring, though I gotta admin, the sliders are pretty neat. However the portfolio of work is excellent. Im 22 and JELLOUS!!!! AAAAGGHHHH!!

Nice work though, mate!

I totally agree with John's review. I wanted to stay on this site and read every line. It's a fun site with a clean design.

As it was already said before, the site itself isn't somethin' special (however I personally like this sort of clean and simple design), but regarding the portfolio... well, it is a great piece of work ;)

Like it

Madeo

David: ( i'm bitter 2 hours of slepp in the last 48, sry)

David, next time get some sleep before commenting. I was only discussing the usability of Tim's site to give him feedback, and I'm glad he has a better attitude than you. When I said it was overlooked I meant that the reviewer didn't mention it. I was making the comment on 5 hours of sleep in 48 hrs so there's no excuse for your comment.

Besides I wasn't speaking from my personal standard but from W3C standards and recommendations, I believe that's what Stylegala is about, and the reviewers noticed the same thing and have already mentioned it.

Like I said I like Tim's site and I think as he learns more he will eventually blow the rest of us out of the water.

It behooves me why someone would be browsing design galleries and posting comments if you don't even have time to sleep, presumably because of work.

Anyway, really nice work.

According to xylescope the first page weights 1177.7 KB in total!!! I cannot understand how you choose a site that it is almost impossible to view with a normal connection.

Lefteris - exactly. Having moved home recently i'm still on dialup whiel broadband gets installed and it took almost 5 minutes to load ....

and here was me thinking that standards compliant sites wee supposed to reduce bandwidth etc ...

it isn't even that nice a site to be honest - sure the work on it is nice, but thats not what we're reviewing. In IE at least, the headers don't even correspond to the right piece of work - it looks like the text below an image belongs to it, when instead it represents the one below. Its confusing and using some pre-written script (mooFX IIRC) does not a good design make.

I'm glad to see the rating come down on this one - look at Jesse's 31three design and then look at this one - I know who's is a) more professional and b) more suited to online browsing as opposed to belonging on a CD due to the bandwidth requirements.....

It's a lovely site Tim - congratulations. Lots of space, nice type choices, subtle and effective use of Javascript, and you've used the vertical space really well. I can understand people's concerns about the weight of the opening page, but I can't think of many portfolio sites that would be lighter on the download. You should get an editor to run an eye over the site - and perhaps reacquaint yourself with the rules of apostrophe use :) - because there's nothing like misplaced apostrophes to put off potential employers. And not a drop-shadow in sight! Good on you.

as opposed to belonging on a CD due to the bandwidth requirements.....

Oh come on. I completely disagree. I for one gave up on supporting dial up users a while ago. I also see no reason why you needed to state that Tim's site isn't as professional as 31three. It's a mater of taste, really.

I like the minimal design and the focus on portfolio work. There's some really great stuff there. Congratulations, Tim!

This is a nice site, but I do agree with the concerns of loading times.

"I for one gave up on supporting dial up users a while ago."

Greg, what next, are you going to give up on 800 x 600 and everyone who uses IE? I'm sorry but that just isn't an acceptable approach to building websites.

Anyways, good work Tim

Tim could have just put one project on one page, and the inserted a "next"-button. Because "not supporting dial-up users" is just ignorant and stupid.

Alltho' his work is great, like it's been said, it's not the work that is beeing rated, it's the site. And the site itself is not making it for me, that's why I'm giving it a low rating.

Of course people still use IE, you wont find large companies rolling out Firefox yet.

The title font is a bit choppy, its ok but should be replaced with images or a sIFR technique.

Takes a while to load as already mentioned, maybe a slow server?

Nice site though, memorable.

Love the sliding action on the job info. Love a lot of the work too, really nice.

Maybe make a little logo for yourself?

Yeas nice portfolio there. Btw Tim Benzinger Interview can be found on mcville :

http://www.mcville.net/article/51/tim-benzinger-interview

Thank you all for your contructive comments. I see exactly where you are coming from. Though, let's think about the purpose of my site. It's a "Portfolio Sampler" that showcases the work of a graphic designer. The targeted audiance is potential employers and graphic designers. Some may say "the site is useless" or "has no purpose". It has reached many studios and I have recieved amazing feedback. Seems to me like it's doing everything it was supposed to. So now let's ask ourselves what a good portfolio is. In my view, a good portfolio showcases 8-12 pieces. I think 30 would just bore someone to death and they won't even notice what axactly you do. Why all on one page? This is something I have reseatched for a while now. If you have a large portfolio, people don't look at everything. Keeping it all on one page makes them WANT to check out the work. The minimal design keeps the from being distracted as well. I'm running out of words, so thanks for your comments and your time

Excellent portfolio - this guy shows exceptional talent for such youth. The girl in the white shirt sat on the couch seems to have some great talents also - can you apply a 'javascript opacity transition switch' to her clothing please? Thanks.

I'm with Kev on all fronts.

Tim, Tim, Tim, I hate you ... no I don't. You're awesome, sites looks good, portfolio is even better. Good stuff.

The page load time can be drastically reduced by saving your jpegs with photoshops 'save for web'. Try lowering the quality to around 70%. It will probably cut each jpeg in half and the actual visual quality won't suffer very much either.

great site, great portfolio too! i liked it even before I hit the 'tabs'

Will google still index all the hidden content? Or will the javascript call in the div stop google from 'seeing' all the text behind the sliding divs?

"The site itself is a little boring, though I gotta admin, the sliders are pretty neat. However the portfolio of work is excellent. Im 22 and JELLOUS!!!! AAAAGGHHHH!!

Nice work though, mate!"

I respect this comment... But I must *partially* disagree. The simplicity is quite elegant, and does not distract from what Tim is really trying to show…his design work. His work does not bore me. He has something special. The concepts are amazing, and they are well executed. One thing is true, Jealousy has reached a new level.

All this arbitrary disagree/agree about ways to do things. Too much implementation talk.

At the end of the day the question is: does it meet Tims objectives for the site? (what ever they are).

If they are met, its successful.

i dig the neat and tidy outlook he has. & one thing to blew my mind off was knowing he's only 19?! damn kid's got talent! maybe we should hook up or sumwat huh? props boey!