Portfolio web site a "strong design effort"

Tom McCormick has a trenchant review of the Portfolio.com web site on the Bivings Report that is much more illuminating than my own critique.

McCormick wrote, “All new web efforts must have a blog component and portfolio.com is no exception. Speaking only on the design, I like the way they have set this section up. Since ‘Blogs’ seems so early 2007, ‘Views’ is the term applied in this case and although that may conjure up visions of Joy Behar, it is actually 9 bloggers who range in expertise from fashion to beer. The black and white illustrations as links from the homepage are perfectly matched to the site as well. If I read blogs, I might click through.

“As I continue down the page it strikes me as pretty unique that there is valuable content down here. The only video on the page is about 2000 pixels down and not a throw away piece. Even further down the page are the Portfolio.com Features, one of which is a beautifully rendered flash graph that rates executives by their office floor, compensation and industry. It’s so well executed that it can’t be discarded as executive envy/worship. The page finishes with a flourish of web 2.0 touches. The deep, content heavy footer anchors the page well, and is preceded by an interesting site map of the universal navigation that includes the drop down menus as static points.

“A very strong design effort in my opinion. It will be interesting to see how the site evolves. If the sparse advertising is a real commitment on the homepage or if we’ll see the eventual traffic jam of blinking mortgage rate ads.”

Read more here.