Graduation is still a little way of, but already I am starting to think how things will come together in terms of promoting my illustration and making work by use of a website. There have been a few brief discussions about this in the studio with our tutor's and from what I have gathered is that the website needs to be maintained, eye catching, easy to navigate as in clients/viewers can access an image straight away with minimum hassle as possible, I also think memorable springs to mind as it really needs to capture what I and my work are about in terms of style and themes etc. For this short report I have tried to look at quite a few websites to get a good idea on how I would like my own website to look. The most recent site I looked at was Joseph Cornell's 'The Joseph Cornell Box, being a maker I loved how interactive the site was, like one of his boxes was right before your eyes, very magical. The site was really easy to navigate around as each little compartment of the box has a header in each section that appears when you hover over it, there is also a small image that shows before the header appears, which gives you a little taste of the theme and feel of his work, I like that it's interactive as I am very into engaging the viewer with my work where possible, it's also clean and simple, not too over the top and confusing, yet it's effective and the use of white background makes the elements stand out, the link to the site is here.
Vanessa Boer is a current Illustrator & Maker, I really lover her site also, again simple headers and categories that will take you straight to say her contact details or Portfolio, it's really user friendly and accessible. It's very sophisticated and professional, once you go in to a particular section, a set of thumbnails appear so you choose the image you want to look at, I also like the portfolio is broken down into sub sections, which I feel really works if a client is looking for a certain style such as 3D or collage, it also shows the different styles you work in rather than the client having to scroll through all the images as more than likely they are under a tight schedule so I think if they can see what they want straight away, it will go in your favour. My favourite section of her site is the studio tour, this may be because I am fascinated with peoples working spaces and things/objects they own, I think it's a really nice touch to the site especially as Vanessa Boer is a maker also, and the few carefully selected beautiful photographs that are featured on the site show a flavour and theme of what her interests are, the objects she collects which give an essence about what her work is like, this is definitely a feature I would like on my site, even if it's just a few photographs. I think it's also nice for clients to see where the work is made as well as the finished work. See Vanessa Boer's work here.
Roberta Wood is also an Illustrator & maker, her work is great, very colourful and busy, but I feel the layout of her website was a little busy. Because her work is very loud I personally feel that headers or limited images would of been more effective, I also think the colour scheme and letter colouring style could be more effective as the colours don't work with the style of her work, this is only a personal based opinion. A link to her site is here.
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