Mid-level Level Designer looking for PORTFOLIO feedback

I can't print it, and I don't see a PDF. Businesses need something to print to mark up and talk about candidates, especially if you're brought in for an interview.

You or the tools you're using have disabled resizing and the default right-click so those are out, people can't zoom the site to make it more readable. It's an extra barrier for people who know what they're doing to modify the elements in-browser to fix the absolutely crappy DOM. You probably didn't do any of that as you're a level designer rather than programmer, so I think it all comes for free with your Figma site. Either way, the website design itself is awful. Looking at the scripting of the site, it's trying to jump back to a bunch of stats sites and continuous logging, which it looks like my system is blocking. For our front-end developers that's an automatic disqualification for applicants. Figma is convenient for you, but sucks for the ecosystem.

Until I disable all the awful scripts the page is basically unusable. I can't zoom, I can't right click to print, I can't right click to do anything, I can't preview links on the page, I can't select text, I can't copy your email address, I can't select your linked-in profile that I assume is supposed to be a hyperlink as it's underlined but isn't an actual hyperlink but a tracking script. The page is viewable but also unusable.

Run your page through Google's PageSpeed Insights tool. It fails nearly every test. Fails performance, fails best practices, 6 seconds for content, 8 seconds before fully painted page, on and on.

The right-hand side of the portfolio page is mystery meat navigation. The top one is probably a profile, the four bars is maybe a menu or heading, I'm not sure about P01, P02, P03, eyeballs, paper, stick figure, and swearing speech bubble? I'm really not sure what you intended. There's no hover-over tag, tooltip, and no proper URL nor browser-provided link information, so they're garbage.

Your font choices suck. You may know level design but it's terrible for graphics design. Underneath your name and level designer, there's a font that's too small and auto-scales badly so many lines are cut out and basically unreadable on my screen. The entire site has an awful, script-resized font that's too small to comfortably read, especially when I've opened up developer tools in the window. I can't read it without effort, so that's a no-go. It looks like you designed it for a specific width and then set it to automatically scale to preserve that relative width. That can work for print, but doesn't work well on the web. Instead of resizing the page, it shrinks the font. I can't do the browser default of control + mouse wheel to zoom, instead it maintains the proportions of the width of the browser window, make it wider and the text is more readable, tile my windows and it becomes blobs.

The gunmetal grey on black background is low contrast and difficult to read, ESPECIALLY with the auto-scaled font size that is badly resized. The orange on black is at least high contrast, but it's a combination known for eye strain and visual vibration. None of those color combinations pass accessibility tests.

Scrolling through your projects, you've included a link to the game, a video of the gameplay but not to what you did. Your responsibilities section at least looks decent.

When I finally get through to the actual content, it looks like what you've got is decent, but honestly it would REALLY be a struggle. If that's you presenting your own best look, I wouldn't call you for an interview. That's not because of the content, the presentation of the page is so difficult to read and understand that I just don't want to look at the content, there are other applicants where the content jumps out and says "look at me!"

On to your CV.

Two column design, I personally dislike it but I understand it. Headings are all lowercase for some reason, the text has some inconsistent capitalization rules.

Just like the portfolio, a broken page, can't print it, can't select text, can't copy/paste, can't preview your links because they're actually tracker scripts. It isn't readable with my screen reader. Picture on the CV is an automatic disqualification where I live, but I know in some parts of the world it is essential. Around here it is bait for discrimination lawsuits.

In general choose THREE fonts maximum, two typefaces maximum. I see 11. At least there's no Comic Sans, Papyrus, or Curlz. Pick a color scheme and stick with it.

Most of the left column is useless to me. Show, don't tell: "Strengths: Analytical thinking, effective communication, creative, collaborative", how am I supposed to judge any of that? You tell me "effective communication", but the communication I see is gray-on-black, fonts that are hard to read, unexpected capitalization, and mystery-meat navigation. What does 4/5 dots on Unreal Engine 5 mean? What does 3/5 dots on Jira mean? Or the same on the others? Does 4/5 dots in Unreal Engine mean you have completed 80% of the tutorials you've found online, or does it mean you're at the level where you can teach 80% of the UDN courses? Does 3/5 dots on Jira mean you can enter new tasks and start new sprints, or does it mean you're mostly able to create your own Jira plugins with only occasionally referring to documentation?

Instead of 4/5 dots of UE5, describe how you used Unreal on each project. Instead of 3/5 dots in Jira, describe what you did with it on each project. Describe how you used Perforce, how you used Photoshop, how you created and used Miro boards, I don't know what 3/5 or 4/5 means, but I can easily understand if you describe how you used them.

There is no education section, instead you've buried it in a second or third paragraph of About Me, I honestly can't tell if it's #2 or #3 thanks to the layout choices. "I hold a degree in Landscape Design from the University of the Arts in Poznan". The fact that you've hidden it suggests you're not exactly proud of it or you don't think it's relevant or otherwise don't want to highlight it for some reason, and that makes me want to ask more questions.

The bullet points of what you did at each job and the list of projects you've worked on are decent. They are generally transferable skills, but I really have to struggle with the documents just to reach the point where I want to read them. The layout of the documents put me off to the point I really don't even want to read them.

Looking over them I don't see many concrete elements. You designed and iterated on level blockouts, how many? 5? 500? You optimized levels for smooth performance and player experience how? Did you use UE's performance stats? Visual logs? Network communications recordings?

Yes, what you listed for the past five years are all level designer tasks so I can assume that they're typical of other level designers out there, but at the same time, there should be more present so I don't have to assume, I can see more detail.

That's what I see with my 20 minute review. In short, while the content is okay, I would not have looked at it long enough to read the content. With the overall presentation I'd look it over, can't print it, can't copy and paste, can't resize. At that point I'd move on to the next applicant.

Um, maybe he just fixed everything really really fast, but I'm not getting all these stated performance problems using the website. I'm using a Firefox browser on a Windows 11 desktop and a public library connection in the USA. The stuff about right clicking, I don't see any difference from just clicking. I don't know why I'd want to right-click, but then again I'm not evaluating job applications either. I just thought I'd push back on some of the performance claims. Seems like I can navigate the site just fine.

bvanevery wrote:

Um, maybe he just fixed everything really really fast, but I'm not getting all these stated performance problems using the website. I'm using a Firefox browser on a Windows 11 desktop and a public library connection in the USA

The page renders at about 5 FPS for me when scrolling on MacOS Firefox. It's definitely broken, completely unacceptable for a web page, much less a CV. Everything Frob said is 100% on point. Your response shows you are unable to consider that something might be a problem even if it doesn't affect you personally. I find this lack of empathy to be a consistent problem among tech people ("it works fine on my machine"), and partly why modern software/web is so broken and slow (e.g. the OP's website, numerous others). Very real bugs and feedbacks get ignored because the developer is unable to put themselves in the shoes of the user.

The stuff about right clicking, I don't see any difference from just clicking. I don't know why I'd want to right-click

To print copies for marking up, to copy/paste into corporate systems, to copy email address or other contact info, to share lines of it with others on the interview team, those immediately come to mind.

Lack of a PDF and also not being easily copy/pasted are enough of blockers for me. Can't get it to the team, it will immediately be skipped.

The general saying is they get about ten seconds of review. Google page insights says 8 of that is waiting for the thing to transfer.

Well, I can't speak to a stressed out hiring person's job. I've rarely been in that position, I was only providing input not decisionmaking, and my input wasn't particularly stressed. I'd be dealing with 1 person's potential, not hundreds.

But it seems to me, insistence on a paper based process is old-fashioned, backwards-looking, very much the imposition of a personal prerogative, and bad for trees.

I'm much more sympathetic to "lack of cut and paste". I'm a text editor kind of guy. if it's not easy to move the digital information around digitally, it's a bit of a problem.

That said, it does beg the question, why other people in your company can't just reference the online digital info as it exists. Not like the internet is usually down for most of us. I suppose that would be a bookmarking / URL copy problem, as to what people's process is. If I can easily bookmark stuff, ok fine, even a text editor can work. If not, well, that's a problem.

Carping on format and digital transfer, to someone else's preferred workflow, sounds like the material fails to "WOW" the evaluator in the 1st place. So, picking at format. Back in the day, I was only ever doing resumes and cover letters, no fancy media. I was pretty good at cover letters because of my liberal arts background. Unlike a lot of technical people, I could write very well. Pretty much spent college on that.

If it's not gonna be a cover letter with great words, I suppose something else has gotta "WOW". No attention = next.

There is always the possibility that the HR person is not really qualified to evaluate one's aptitude or potential contribution, so "WOW" might be lost upon them. Pearls before swine. That's why networking and getting your resume in front of an engineer in the company, for instance, instead of HR, was considered important. For technical positions, the engineer actually knows what they're doing and is qualified to see if you do too.

I've never tried to apply for an artsy / design position.

Aressera wrote:

Your response shows you are unable to consider that something might be a problem even if it doesn't affect you personally.

My response doesn't say I'm unable to do anything.

But I would say, "It doesn't work on my preferred OS and browser" is whining, when one's choice is not market dominant. Well of course, if you're applying for a position at a Mac-centric company, perhaps you should make sure it works on Safari, I'll grant you that! But "I use Firefox and something blew up," that's just not a legit excuse. On Windows you'd switch to Microsoft Edge temporarily, the browser that the rest of the world is using all the time. If it didn't work in Edge, yes that would be a problem.

bvanevery wrote:

Aressera wrote:

Your response shows you are unable to consider that something might be a problem even if it doesn't affect you personally.

My response doesn't say I'm unable to do anything.

But I would say, "It doesn't work on my preferred OS and browser" is whining, when one's choice is not market dominant. Well of course, if you're applying for a position at a Mac-centric company, perhaps you should make sure it works on Safari, I'll grant you that! But "I use Firefox and something blew up," that's just not a legit excuse. On Windows you'd switch to Microsoft Edge temporarily, the browser that the rest of the world is using all the time. If it didn't work in Edge, yes that would be a problem.

There it is again, disregarding real bug reports and being unable to think outside your own position. Also, major LOL at "Microsoft Edge ..., the browser that the rest of the world is using all the time". According to statcounter.com, Chrome has 66% market share, Safari at 16%, Edge at only 5%.

Aressera wrote:

being unable to think outside your own position.

You always assert things like that so boldly? Someone pushes back on something you say, so you tell them they can't think?

According to statcounter.com, Chrome has 66% market share, Safari at 16%, Edge at only 5%.

And your Firefox on MacOS that you called out earlier, would be like what, 0% ?

Ok ok, I'll try to review Chrome market share on Windows. The site you referenced is problematic because it only says "Desktop" without regard to OS. I found a more specific source: https://radar.cloudflare.com/reports/browser-market-share-2025-q4#id-7-market-share-by-os Chrome still wins by a large margin, ~69.3%. But Edge is not as low placed as you say, it's ~18.7%. Still pretty bad considering what should be Microsoft's advantage, but it does say you'd test against Edge before you'd worry about Firefox.

I'm really made to wonder why Windows users end up with Chrome. Will research.

bvanevery wrote:

I'm really made to wonder why Windows users end up with Chrome.

Me too.

I guess it's because MS browsers could not compete Firefox and later Chrome at the time when most people got used to them, and now they want to stick at that.

As i remember, MS Internet Explorer could kill Netscape, but then Firefox took the lead until Google decided to join that race.
Personally i switched from Firefox to Chrome because the former became too slow for my VM. Now, eventually all browsers have similar UX and performance, but it's hard to switch because Chrome knows all my passwords but i do not.

At least we can still choose which evil mega corp we feed with our data. <:)

Articles I read about browsers, said that Chrome did a whole bunch of extensions hoopla. Maybe there's a large class of users who think they want or need extensions. I mostly don't. I think I have only 1, a kind of ad blocker. I'm not even loyal about which one I use. I've had to review it from time to time if something stops working. Anyways, if you feel you must have this or that extension to live your life, then there's a network effect and Chrome does indeed have a way of locking you in. For all I know, maybe my experience of the Firefox extension ecology has left me with such "meh" feelings, that I have no imagination for a different "better" world. Extension devs probably prefer having 1 primary target platform.

bvanevery wrote:

Maybe there's a large class of users who think they want or need extensions. I mostly don't. I think I have only 1, a kind of ad blocker.

23 on my main browser. They're assorted features: toggling histograms on images, downloading full videos from websites, reverse image search, multi-factor authentication, HTTP header modification for developer tools, interceptor tools to help me with debugging, CSS modification tools, and more.

I mostly left Chrome when they changed their format to break ad-blockers, which had a side effect of breaking some of my more useful debugging tools. Brave still allows them, so I moved.

Lol sticking middle finger to Google and YouTube ads is for me the whole point of a plugin. Seems to be the only one I need, and must have. So Chrome, forget it! Heck I.E. and Edge forget it, went to Firefox eons ago. So long ago, that I didn't know Chrome had become so popular. What a trick, offering people all sorts of extension toys, just so they can keep shoving ads at you.

For me, add blocker in Chrome still works, also for YT.

Maybe it's because i can't have the newest version on my Win7 VM. No more updates. Exactly what i want. \:D/