There are clients who have a very clear vision of how they want their website to look like and there are clients who simply just want or need a web presence and they rather have a web designer decide how it's going to look like. Working with both types of designers is exciting and also very rewarding.
It's always fun to accept the challenge of making someone's vision become a reality. On the other hand, it's also fun to deliver a website without any previous design demands by the client and hear that: "Wow! Yeah, I actually really like it."
Those were the exact same words that Zack used when I told him his website was finished. Zack is a freelance artist based in Houston, Texas. His drawings are amazing and he gets his inspiration from cartoon characters, gaming, and history (especially Middle Ages). Check out his website for reference: Zack Dyer.
Instead of exchanging the content virtually, I got his drawings in the mail (well, that's not true, I got his drawings after picking up a slip from my PO box and then standing in line to pick up my package - have to love the USPS system in Eagle, CO). His artwork is so amazing that I couldn't stop turning the pages of his portfolio. The first thing that came to my mind was "black". I generally love colors and vivacity. My favorite color is turquoise (as you can tell by Colibri Web Design website colors), followed by orange, purple and marine blue. But Zack's style was just screaming in black and white. I had this vision of mainly black website with his black and white drawings standing out on white paper. I used black on the top of the page but the body of the website uses different shades of dark grey.
The idea for colors was set. What about layout and content?
I try to keep things simple with artist portfolios. Art is complex already and the potential client will be able to recognize the talent just by looking at the portfolio. The portfolio is the key ingredient of an artist's website. In my opinion, choosing quality over quantity is important when selecting the portfolio items. I made Zack's portfolio the primary ingredient of his home page. It has a filterable gallery so that website visitors can look through his photos by choosing different tags. To the left of a brief portfolio, there is a link to a full portfolio that takes you to a new page. Both portfolios are very extensive. With a mouse hover, each drawing has the option of "zoom" or "view". Clicking on "zoom" the drawing opens in a lightbox and clicking on "view" opens a new page with a zoomed drawing, description, date, author etc.
As Zack is a medieval enthusiast, I thought he would like the medieval font so I used "Almendra" as his heading and body font.
How else to present an artist?
Name - Portfolio - Experiences (About) - Services (optional) - Work with me. That's it! Less is more. If the artist uses Instagram to publish what he or she does on a regular basis, I would also add real-time Instagram gallery in the footer area.
In artist portfolio websites, I try to not contaminate the website with unnecessary modules and I like to let the art speak for itself. If you have a passion that you would like to share with the world, contact me here and set up a free consultation. I'll be happy to hear your ideas and build a custom website or you can let my imagination do the work for you.
*There is an unlimited number of revisions included with each website.
