Website Research and Review.

Having just purchased my very own domain I realised I hadn't the foggiest what I wanted my website to look like. So...website envy commences! This was probably one of the easiest areas of PDP for me as ninety nine percent of my bookmarked pages online are artists websites or design pages. Websites are very easy to judge by sight and of course how easily you can navigate round them, but now I needed to look at them through a designers eyes, review elements I would carry onto my own site.

First port of call was to take a peek at some of my favourite illustrators and creative makers websites to see how they saw fit to execute them, I'll start with a front-runner; Dennis McNett, creator of Wolfbat and holder of wolfbat.com.

Wooden Carving by Dennis McNett of Wolfbat.

His love for narrative work has been translated into various different techniques, be it print, products, sculptures, intricate wood carvings or exuberant events, which means that his website must be equally as flexible without being over-complicated.

Screenshot of wolfbat.com homepage

His website does his work justice complimented by the excellent photography and organised sections. The homepage is broken into a triptych that flashes between two sets of images, each image a preview of the three main fields his work is devoted to, print, sculpture and installation. So straight of the bat you're getting a summary of the website and a taste for whats inside. The logo in the top left corner is beautiful up close; black and white inverted drawing of a wolf head with bat wings, it's just a shame it's so small. It has all the staples, contact page with a touch of 'about the artist' (maybe a little self-indulgent but interesting non-the less), an almost endless gallery of wonderfully presented work split over five sections (great organisation and for work of this caliber the sub-categories are a must), and link to well managed blog on tumblr. But the little extra that sets Wolfbat's site apart from others is the 'Happenings' link. Thanks to the nature of his Installation work and weird and wonderful mask making abilities, McNett and his dedicated team stage larger than life performances, parades and sculptural scenes that are filmed with accompanying annotations. These are found under the Happenings section and are outstanding to watch. In conclusion, Wolfbat.com is very well organised, straight to the point and really very simple which accentuates the work more in my opinion, his pieces speak for themselves and this site really lets them breathe.

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Moving on to another personal favourite, Caitlin Hackett. Her website was more disappointing as it isn't really a website at all. The homepage of caitlinhackett.com looks like it's barely been touched with just one image, no banner or even change of font and each link leading to different sites.

Homepage of Caitlinhackett.com

To view her work, you have to enter carbonmade site where her initial page is a lot more inviting and better thought out. In my opinion, the whole set up is an easy answer to a professionals problem. As a practicing designer you're expected to own and manage your own domain, site and email. Some agencies or directors just won't take you seriously without it, but in the real world not everybody is a technological genius or has the money to pay somebody who is, to do it for them. I think in Caitlin's case she recognises the need for her own URL but was happy with the carbonmade portfolio so didn't feel it was necessary to duplicate.

Homepage of Caitlin Hackett's Carbonmade Portfolio

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Next up is Jason Holley. Even though I haven't' looked at Holley in depth or known about him for a great deal of time, I find his work and process fascinating and his videos on vimeo incredibly witty.

'Slings and Arrows' by Jason Holley,

His website is very professional and although I'm not a huge fan of the homepage the links have an odd little twist. If you hover over them, the headings are transformed into quirky little anagrams, not really a great deal of function there but since the page isn't cluttered with logos or text it makes for a nice touch.

Homepage for jasonholley.com

In short, the best part of Holley's website isn't really the way it's presented (although in Archive and Illustration the neat square thumbnails are attractive) but the unusual amount of information you get about each piece. He comments on the intent and purpose of the piece, method used to create it and even a short evaluation containing his opinion. It's a window you don't usually get with artist's and especially not with their public displays of work.

Throughout my research I came across good and bad websites, as with everything and without being cruel and naming/shaming the bad ones I just took note of what to avoid. One of the most irritating traits a site can have is an automatic music player, I genuinely don't know why you would even do that, especially if you've got questionable taste in music. Another niggle is websites that are overloaded with flash files that take ten minutes to load, don't work properly and then crash your computer. It's true that less is usually more. The only other thing that really gets my goat is having the website mostly about the person rather than the work. It's fine to have 'working process' images and a little bit about yourself, even a self indulgent resume to fluff yourself up for all the world to see but there's nothing worse than the homepage or contact page being an essay of the artists life and interest. Nobody really cares that you've got three dogs and like a lie in on a Sunday.