Welcome to the third installment of the Folio review Series
Part 1 (Coroflot)
Part 2 (Carbon Made)
Part 3 (Fig Dig)
Part 4 (Behance)
Part 5 (Wordpress)
Launched in February 2007 FigDig’s goal is to “build a community of superstars that [they] can market and promote to those interested in finding creative talent.” The site currently contains approximately 11,352 Folios. The creative specialties that you’ll find on FigDig include Creative Branding, Logo Identity, Environmental Design, Brochure and Literature, Annual Report, Photography, Editorial, Website Design, Website Development, Advertising, Packaging as well as Illustration which like Coroflot and Carbonmade seems to be the most popular category.
Look & Feel
FigDig has a clean, clutter free look about it and the grey and orange color scheme works well.
Features and ease of use
Uploading your folio onto FigDig, like most folio solutions is relatively quick and painless. Login, click upload sample and off you go. FigDig also allows you to upload High Resolution images, which is a feature no other sites I have reviewed so far offer. They also allow you to create your own sample thumbnail for people to click on as oppose to being stuck with the automatically generated one.
You can also put in profile information and upload a PDF version of your profile if you choose.
Customization
The isn’t any settings to allow you to customize the look of your folio in any way.
Help
There is no explicit help page so to speak of, however there is an email address you can send questions and queries to.
Extra Features worth a mention
The Hall of Fame – Once you upload your folio you can be in the running to be in the hall of fame. Entry into the hall of fame is though the entire FigDig community voting on a winner. The winner is listed in the hall of fame and wins an iPod.
Pros
1. People can leave comments on your work.
2. PDF Profile upload.
3. Customized Thumbnails
Cons
1. The controlling attitude of FigDig. FigDig will ” will suspend or terminate any account” that doesn’t meet their requirements. While every website has the right to do this, it is very blatant and in your face. You can’t add your own key words, you must pick from their list.
2. You can reset rating on your work! What’s going on here? This is nice if you have a bad rating, but if the community has rated your work badly then maybe its time to rethink what your doing?
3. Ads in your folio and throughout the whole site. These make your folio look a little unprofessional and clutter the space, thus detracting from your work as they are distracting.
4. You must renew your FigDig membership on a yearly basis. More of a hassle than a Con.
5. short passwords – this annoying why can’t users have any password they choose?
Other
Under you account information tab it has a header saying “Account and Billing Information” not sure what the go is, since they claim the whole service is free! Their tag line is “Online Portfolio’s for Free”.
If you’ve got any tips, comment or ideas for online folios that you would like to share, let everyone know in the comments section or send it through to design droplets using the contact page.
Coming up next….Behance.
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