Web Design Clinic - Art by Jo Moss
My Thoughts
In some ways, art gallery sites can be very difficult to design. You want a design that doesn't distract from the art pieces, but if it's too simple or boring, it lends that tone to the artwork. Joanna has chosen to go with a fairly monochromatic grey site so that the colors of the artwork are not overpowered by the colors of the design. But to keep the greys from being boring, Joanna put a teal border and accents into the page.
Read the rest of my review
How Would You Critique This Site?
What advice would you give to Joanna about this site? Are there things she could do to make it better? Have you created an art gallery site? What did you do to make the site not overpower the art? Post your comments on the design
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Do You Want Your Site Considered for the Web Design Clinic?
There are two ways you can have your site reviewed on Web Design @ About.com. You can use either method, you don't have to use both:
- Post a request in the Site Review Requests folder in the Web Design forum. This is the best way to get feedback, as you'll get responses from other Web designers in the forum, and selected posts will be chosen for the Web Design Clinic.
- Submit your site to the Web Design Design Gallery and check the "solicit critiques" checkbox on the form. Pages submitted there will be reviewed by the About.com Guide to Web Design, Jennifer Kyrnin, and may be chosen for the Web Design Clinic.
Comments
One suggestion I would have come up with was using a gallery type interface with thumbnails, rather than page by page. Have like a 4 x 4 thumbnail gallery, which then uses LightBox 2 to show the art piece and comment. I think this would really show off the art piece as it would fade out the site and focus the art image.
I agree with Jennifer and Cristian Giordano. Also, the logo is too large for the page and makes the art go below the fold. It overpowers the page. Lightbox 2 is a great way to display images without taking away from the web page design. I prefer to crop a small thumbnail to tease the viewer into wanting to view the full image.
I’d just say that the header has too much height in the gallery, watching your pices of art is difficoult cause you need to scroll down every time you change page, it’s annoying. I’d suggest you to place yourphotos in the middle of the browser, it will better focalize the visitor’s attention to the images.
I strongly agree with the suggestion for a thumbnail page to begin the gallery…you don’t have to have all of them available on the first page, but enough to entice me to continue….when I step into an art gallery, I expect to see a few paintings, which I can then step closer to see. And then go from room to room (page to page) to see more. If all I see is a directory telling me how to get to more paintings, its 50/50 if I will move on to see them.
Based on info from About.com, I recently tracked down “Don’t Make Me Think” by Steve Krug. It put words to impressions I had about what I liked and disliked about web pages I have visited…one point it made is if a visitor doesn’t see what they expect to see, they are more likely to move on without exploring…
I don’t think the design captures the excitement of the paintings. The paintings should be bigger. A large closeup of one of the paintings would be really nice in the header. Another idea which migh work well for a gallery is: there are .php scripts that are very simple to use which could display a different image, at random, from an array she sets up in a folder.
Another suggestion is to make her logo more exciting and colorful, and put an image behind it, a picture of the artist, or a photo of her studio or some images that let the visitor know immediately this is a fine art site. Nothing cheesy… but perhaps a photo of a work in progress, or an image which conveys the spirit of the work (I always loved the multicolored feathers used in the logo for Photoshop!)
Somehow all those boxes remind me of the free website templates that are all over the place. If you want to have varicolored boxes, tone them down a lot.Do that by carefully weighing the values of the greys for subtle contrast and emphasis. If you don’t want to be subtle… you could WORK ‘EM!! Put the boxes to use as containers for information (resume or links to galleries she has shown her work in, reviews, links or more art closeups.
I think the overall design fits with your style of art and I wouldn’t make it any fussier. I even like the teal accent color as it emphasizes your use of bold colors in your art.
The header banner height only became a problem for me on the gallery. Like everyone else, I had to scroll down to see the paintings. So i would modify it to take up less verticle space ONLY for the gallery pages. The large banner works for me on the other pages.
The other comments cover the problems with navigation pretty thouroughly, so the only thing I can add regards the font size. It was a little hard for me to read and I couldn’t increase it in IE.
As a final thought… Don’t take any of this “constructive criticism” too hard. It’s clear that you have put a lot of thought and effort into your site and it looks crisp, clean, artsy, and professional.