I have long treated my website more as a repository of my work than as a focused ‘shop window’.
Whilst I am happy with, and have got good feedback on the aesthetic, branding and the navigation, it was frankly hard to find the most important things, with too many things in front of the viewer at the same time.
I have the work seperated into ‘projects’ and ‘personal’. I think that is still appropriate. I also using a rolling carousel gallery at the top of the project and personal pages – I like this, as it gets attention, and gives a broader view of my work – but not sure if this would be considered ‘artistic’ or ‘professional’ by others.
However, partly because it is overdue, and partly as part of this Module’s assignments, I have started to significantly streamline the site.
I still have an opening splash page, with my portfolio featured, although I have conducted a major edit / overhaul of that portfolio, with more to do.
I have clarified the ‘about me‘ section, in line with my artists statement.
The shopping cart mechanism works well, and using Loxley Colour has been a very reliable and high quality choice for fulfilment.
The menu has been simplified, and ‘projects‘ now opens this much cleaner page:
I have also opted for a cleaner identification of the gallery contents, rather than hovering and hide, which complicated things.
I am still using ‘personal‘ as something of a repository, but I want to get ‘projects’ right, first.
The design also is quite similar to how my Instagram looks, I think, with lots of white space.
As next steps on the website, amongst other things I need to:
- Create better edits of featured galleries.
- Create new galleries build around projects. At the moment, much of the work is set out by chronology or location.
- ‘Hide’ historical galleries from public view, in both the project and personal sections, to simplify things.
But I will seek views and suggestions on all of this, first.