So I didn’t really know what to look at for my portfolio as you don’t really tend to see other peoples portfolios unless looking at uni or at your friends, so I started by looking at various artists websites to try and get ideas and inspiration for my own website.

Below are a couple I looked at and analysed taking away the positives that I might want to use on my website alongside the negatives which I don’t necessarily think works well.

Laura Carlin

One of the first artists I looked at was Laura Carlin, I looked at her work because similar to mine it’s a mixture of different specialisms.

http://www.lauracarlin.com/about/

The minimalist aesthetic of Laura’s website I really like, I find the simplicity allows her work to really stand out. By not distracting the viewers eye it doesn’t take anything away from the her work. The slide format Carlin uses to present her images allows each piece of work to be observed individually and appreciated. The 3-dimensional effect used on each piece of work adds another element to the portfolio making it much more tangible and interesting, even though it’s a simple white background the addition of the shadow really adds depth.

This style and format is something I really relate to and think could work well for my work, with the white background and standard simple font, it allows for the work to speak for itself and the colours to really pop and draw your eye into the detail. As I use pale colours with my illustrations I feel a white background would work well to allow for them to have more impact.

Ronald Dick

I looked at Ronald Dick’s website as I found it was quite a different aesthetic to mine and other websites I’ve looked at.

http://ronalddick.com

Ronald Dick’s portfolio is very sparse in terms of the amount of work he displays, showing his most recent on his personal website and his larger portfolio on his agents website

I prefer the style of his agents website as the clean finishes and uniformity of the size of images it’s a lot easier to look at. The background Dick uses on his website is quite aggressive and detracts from the work, the size of the images are too large resulting in the full image not always fitting completely on the screen unless you have a large computer screen.

Molly Soda

Molly Soda doesn’t use a conventional style with her portfolio which is partly to do with the fact she only exhibits her work online therefore her website isn’t about displaying her work but reinforcing her aesthetic and making it a piece of her work in itself.

http://mollysoda.exposed

The informal nature of Soda’s website is what I really respect, for her style of work and the way she pushes boundaries and concepts. Having a black background it allows for all the emoji’s, gifs and work to stand out, with the organised chaos of Soda’s website it has no clear structure or layout follows in her style however makes for a confusing set up. It doesn’t allow for each of her artworks to stand out on their own or for you to really know where one starts and one ends. It is very much a chaotic jumble of work which I don’t think would work with my work as it doesn’t have a clear flow or any clean blank areas giving the eyes a more satisfying arrangement.

Maisie Cousins 

https://www.maisiecousins.com

Maisie Cousins using a very simple slide theme for her website, Cousins using format which is a portfolio designed website hosting service they create themes specifically for displaying your work. I did look into format when building my website however due to my host and the fact my website is built by wordpress I’m unable to use formats themes or migrate my site to them without a large price tag.

Having the simple menu down the left handside and photography taking up the majority of the webpage maximises the space and immediately draws attention to the photographs. The slide feature allows her to showcase a large amount of photos very quickly and immediately. Without the arrows or buttons however you must swipe on your mouse pad to move the images which I do think is obvious but I don’t think having small arrows wouldn’t hurt. The colour that each of the option on the menu changes when you’re on that page ensures easy navigation on the website alongside the simple menu. I definitely think having the simple menu with the highlighted sections works really well and something I want to incorporate into my website.

Francisca Pageo 

http://franciscapageo.es/Photography

Francisca Pageo’s website has a variety of different on, combining her photography and illustrations. I looked at her website as I found the variety of her work is similar to mine.

Similar to Maisie Cousins website Pageo highlights which page you are to help with navigation which I think is quite an important feature. Pageo however doesn’t use a slide theme however groups her projects by date or name of project, to them see the entire you click on the photo and there are the static collective images. You can scroll manually through the photos without opening the projects page up, changing the initial image until you reach the last one of the section. Pageo’s about page is the longest I have read which I don’t think is necessary as I feel some information she has included in this area can be separated and made more concise and manageable in other sections of the website. I enjoy how static Pageos website is, it’s quite basic in that sense with no sliding illusion or anything moving, just a manual clicking slide show or static images on a page which to an extent I think works well but I think sometimes as we live in such a digital age you need a little bit more.

Summary

I feel minimalist style is definitely the way forward for my website, I’m also going to look into creating shadow definition on my illustrations to create a similar effect to Laura Carlins work as I think it really works well to create the illusion of it being 3D. I like the slide format as well however as my website is a wordpress site the affordable themes are very limited to the designs and features that they offer. To get a theme with a slide format would be a bit pricier which at the moment I unfortunately can’t afford however it is something I would look to do in the future and develop my website into. I do also like the way that Francisca Page displays her work, with a photo displaying the theme of that collection of photos allowing you to choose whether you want to look at the entire collection. All of the websites I have researched none of them feature an introduction or About section on the initial front page apart from Laura Carlin, with majority of them leading straight into the work which I understand and do think it’s important to have visuals immediately however I do think an about section is quite nice as an introduction.

Bibliography 

“About + Contact”. Laura Carlin, 2018, http://www.lauracarlin.com/about/. Accessed 19 Mar 2018.

“Ronald Dick”. Shotview.Com, 2018, http://shotview.com/artists/ronald-dick. Accessed 19 Mar 2018.

“Ronald Dick”. Ronalddick.Com, 2018, http://ronalddick.com. Accessed 19 Mar 2018.

“DO I SEEM MORE PROFESSIONAL TO YOU?”. Mollysoda.Exposed, 2018, http://mollysoda.exposed. Accessed 19 Mar 2018.

“Maisie Cousins – Grass, Peonie, Bum”. Maisie Cousins, 2018, https://www.maisiecousins.com/#0. Accessed 19 Mar 2018.

“Photography – Francisca Pageo”. Franciscapageo.Es, 2018, http://franciscapageo.es/Photography. Accessed 19 Mar 2018.