Best ways to show your art on the web
September 15, 2007
This article is inspired by an article over at ‘Lines and Colors’ called: “How Not to Display Your Artwork on the Web”. It’s a great article, quite sarcastic but there are some great tips there. In the many months that I have been running the Creep Machine, looking for featured artists, images for art of the day & prints and originals for sale, I have seen some amazing web sites and some really bad ones. So I decided to write down some tips, to make sure that your art gets seen.
Of course this whole article is filled with my opinions, but as someone who spends hours a day looking at art as a fan and webmaster, I hope I have a good idea of what works, and if just some of these tips help that’s fine by me.
Where should you host your work?
I strongly suggest staying away from using sites like Myspace as your portfolio. Myspace is geared to be filled with music, flashy graphics and comments. It is also unprofessional looking. You want your art to be as easily accessible as possible. The viewer should be able to see your art as well as your information in just a few clicks. Sites like DeviantArt are ok, but once again they are more setup to be a community to share your art with other artists. Even artists like Justin Degarmo and Josh Taylor have a main homepage along with their DeviantArt account. So if you can’t afford to buy your own hosting, you have two other options.
1.You can use a service like Blogger. This is getting more and more popular, as it’s easy to navigate, your work can be seen quickly and people can learn about you if you post thoughts as well.
2. You can use online portfolios such as: Carbonmade, VoodooChilli & PortfolioCity. each one is free, and gets your art seen quickly and efficiently.
Simple and catchy domain names
If you have your portfolio on blogger, or one of the free portfolios I mentioned, you’ll be stuck with ‘whatever.carbonmade.com’ for example. Not much you can do about that. However, if you decided to pay a small amount, and have your own website you should pick a great name. You want something catchy, easy to spell and easy to remember. If your name is way too long, and people need you to spell it out for them, try something different. Use a nickname, or even just name your site something nutty. Greg “Craola” Simkins uses the domain name ‘imscared.com’. Very simple to remember, and unique as well. Domain names are pretty cheap now, so get one even if you use a site like blogger. Don’t worry about .com, .net or .org. All three of them are very common now, just pick one and make the name easy to share.
Keep the design simple
I think this is the most important tip. Unless your a web designer and are trying to sell that skill, keep your web page simple. I know it’s tempting to make a page that is graphic laden, and will just “wow” your viewers, avoid it. Wow them with your art, not your bloated web design. Stay away from animated graphics, obscure link names that you think is clever, or unnamed images for the page links. Clearly show the areas of your page: ‘Bio, artwork, links, contact’. I know this is boring, but it works. Don’t make the viewer have to hunt to see your artwork, trust me they’ll give up. I often do.
Avoid flash based websites
Flash is cool for very few things. Once again if your selling web design skills then go nuts. But if your trying to have your art seen, avoid 3 minute flash intros, people just want to see the page.
Flash galleries are also bad, they are a pain to use and don’t allow your viewer to see nice big images of your work as well as share your work. Viewers sharing your work with others is a great way to get exposure. I can’t tell you how many artists I have avoided, simple because I can’t share their work.
Keep the image gallery simple and functional
Like I said above, no flash galleries. Avoid watermarks as well. Flash galleries and watermarks are often used to stop people stealing your work. Trust me, if someone wants your work bad enough, they’ll just use a screencapture tool and have it, and you also stop the important people from getting your work. I use the images from artists sites to post here, help sell prints for SFWeekly, and share with galleries. Also avoid using odd thumbnail images, or text. Just show the thumbnail. Not showing the thumbnail is either used to integrate the thumbnails into the site, or to make the viewer have to enlarge the images. Don’t make the experience tedious, just make it simple.
Let them be informed and in touch
Make sure that your website has a small bio area, contact area and news. People like knowing who the person is behind the art. Your sharing your art anyway, and this can be personal depending on your content. Make yourself known as well, or at least a resume, and make your contact information easy to. One of the problems I see on blogger hosted sites, is that there is often no contact info available. How can I work with you, and even buy some art?
Add a news area, and even a mailing list. Keep your viewers informed. A news area lets people know what is going on, any upcoming shows, or even works for sale. It also lets people know your still active. I’ve found a few sites were it looked as though the artists hadn’t done anything in years. A mailing list also keeps people informed of whats going on, and you’ll know that they”ll get the info for sure.
How about some examples?
So, after these little tips, I think it’s best to show some sites that I think fit the tips very well. Many of these sites are from very popular artists, and look how simple their sites are. Maybe their on to something eh?
Dan May :great example of art site, and a blog.
Mark Ryden :simple, easy, to the point.
Chet Zar :love that gallery, nice big thumbnails and info.
Chris Ryniak :his gallery is perfect, you can’t help but look at multiple pieces.
Jeff Soto :I think his site fits every tip here, perfect.
ThinkSpace, Gallery1988 & Jonathan Levine :my three favorite art gallery sites to visit. Filled with content, but easy to navigate.
I’ll refrain from showing bad examples. If your site doesn’t get many hits, and it’s been hard to get your art seen, check out these tips and examples and see if you can’t make it better. Many artists take inspiration from successful artists when it comes to the art, it should be no different to take tips in web design from successful artists websites.
Thanks for reading, you can also check out the article that inspired this one as well.
How Not to Display Your Artwork on the Web
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