Cargo – portfolio site

cargo collective portfolio site

Pay close attention to this post dear blog readers – this portfolio site is 100% free and 200% awesome! I’ve tried out many portfolio systems over the past year, this is head and shoulders above the rest and won’t cost you a penny to have a play, can’t say fairer than that eh? It evolved out of the system that runs the SpaceCollective community, so has a fair fine heritage.

Cargo is largely much like all the others, but what makes it so briliant is down to a few key features like:

  • A strong focus of design and visuals – it’s all about the images
  • Navigation is a full page of projects thumbnails, the defacto best way of naviagting visual work
  • Simple enough for the novice, but enough advanced features to keep the seasoned developer happy
  • Unlimited – uploads, projects, customisation, fun.

What you get:

  • A choice of excellent themes to style your site
  • CSS editor to fine tune or completey customise your site
  • Well maintained forum with lots of top tips
  • Free Hosting
  • Ability to set up a custom URL (www.example.com)

My Cargo porfolio site

I’ve been playing around with it for a week or so, you can see the quick & dirty portfolio I’ve knock up here »

Here’s some other great portfolios I’ve found made with Cargo: Folkert Gorter, Josh Pangell, Stephen Cheetham, Kitchen, or just check out the Cargo Gallery.

It’s is in public beta at this stage, you can request an invite here. There’s talk on the forum of bringing in a flickr-esque annual subscription for a ‘pro account’, with a similar price tag – $25. Sound fair to me, would be happy to pay that.

Tofdru

Tofdru - cut & paste collage artist

Stumbled across the portfolio of Tofdru on Cargo today, it made my day, no shit made my year, this guys work is awesome. I didn’t think I’d see the day when a cut & paste collage artist would top Terry Gilliam, but I think he has. Can’t find out much about him other than he must own crap load of vintage magazines, I suspect he’s French, but his info page is in Japanese?

Update: Yeah he’s probably French, my Japanese friend says he must have used translation software, grammer is all over the place and it doesn’t make sense…

Also here’s his Flickr.

Background paper textures

Free background paper textures

While I was doing my Cargo Collective folio I decided to make a new repeating background gif. Originally I really wanted to have a really bright colourful background, break from the mold of ether black (ish) & white (ish). After much experimenting and playing around, I just couldn’t find a colour that didn’t clash with my work – problem with a colourful image heavy site, so I ended up plumbing for white (ish)

The good news though – I thought I’d post all the rejects here, maybe they’ll be of use to some of my readers :) There’s 2 sets of files for you to download, the gifs are ready to roll, just upload them and insert the link into your html. But I’ve also included a set of Photoshop files, the texture’s just a mask so you can quickly & easily change the colour just by paint bucketing the layer. Note – there’s a second darker layer underneath, you’ll want to change this accordingly with your top layer. They’re all 150 x 150, so not too big file size, have a play around and I hope you find them useful.

The Mighty Deerstalker

The Mighty Deerstalker

In a month’s time (21st March) it’s another of those eccentric and uniquely British events, The Mighty Deerstalker, held just south of Edinburgh, in and around the town of Innerleithen.

It’s an “adventure run” with a difference, all the racers are dressed up in tweed :) The Deerstalker is Fun Run meets Fell Race meets Hellrunner meets Tough Guy. You can expect water jumps, log balance bars, prickly tunnels and cargo nets over the 2 distance options of: 5 km (ish) and 10 km (and a bit).

  1. Check out the route »
  2. Enter here »
  3. Location »

I don’t think I’ll be able to make it up to Scotland for the 2009 event, but maybe next year, looks great :)

Cheers for the link okjerome.