simplicity v. the beast: a portfolio discussion

After running a few updates on my website, I started to ponder the debate that rages in my head every time I work on my portfolio, or someone else’s…

What format is really the most effective for displaying your work, and why?

Points of contention that I generally consider are:

• Target audience
• Quantity of content
• Focal point
• Display of control over the medium

I constantly question whether or not I am making the right decisions, as anyone in the design world should. When I originally chose to work with flash rather than a blogroll style display, my thinking was to engage the user with not only my work and my preferred medium, but also to utilize an engine where I could best display my creative spirit. It didn’t seem to matter how much information you placed inside a Flash shell, as long as you weren’t running too much content that had to be preloaded. The drawback was that, in my case, you had to navigate through at least one level to view the work on display. Knowing this framework, I presumed the animation would have to be engaging enough to keep the user exploring and playing with the site.

I’d love to hear some other opinions on why certain portfolio layouts are preferred or thought of as more effective formats. Why did you choose the style of presentation that you did? What you find to be effective/ineffective? Or why do you love/hate what others have done?