Feedback for my art site please

[brendannz]

Hi guys,

I've just designed my art website. I've got A LOT of artwork, so completing the site is going to take some time, but please look at what I've done and if anybody has any feedback it would be appreciated. I designed the site myself.

I've only completed "Wellington Gallery 1" and "About Me"

there are some errors in the bottom menu, put </br> in instead of <br /> but I can go back and change that so it will work

I designed the whole thing in notepad, which meant that I couldn't get the copyright sign on properly and it comes up as a question mark.

But anyway, I've got A LOT of artwork to put up, so feedback for the site while I'm 15% of the way through would be great thanks!

Because, if I get this feedback after I'm 100% complete, then I may have a lot of backtracking to do.

What do you guys think of my site? And.. here it is...

Brendan Grant Artwork . Com

Cheers,

[Rebecca800]

Wow Brendan, you have talent! I like your artwork...

I have a couple of small suggestions to make. I think that a website to show artwork should be minimalistic, so the attention stays with the art. With that in mind, I'd go for an all-white background (lose the grey and yellow areas).

Your logo needs to be consistent (its red and black at the top, and all white in the main image). As a logo it's also a little plain.... if there is one thing on your minimalistic site that is allowed to draw attention - it's the logo! Because this is another way people will remember you by.

My only other suggestions is to left-align your text on your About Me page, as it looks a bit unusual being centered.

Aside from that, I like your easy navigation and how you can access any image from a thumbnail on every page. Good work!

[brendannz]

[QUOTE=Rebecca800;442273]

Thanks for the great feedback!

I have a couple of small suggestions to make. I think that a website to show artwork should be minimalistic, so the attention stays with the art. With that in mind, I'd go for an all-white background (lose the grey and yellow areas).

Thanks Rebecca, I'll probably do this.

Your logo needs to be consistent (its red and black at the top, and all white in the main image). As a logo it's also a little plain.... if there is one thing on your minimalistic site that is allowed to draw attention - it's the logo! Because this is another way people will remember you by.

One thing though, I quite like the logo in the image, with white foreground with a shadow over top of the paintings on the banner image, so I might think about making a banner something like that up top maybe? The Black and Red logo looks a bit bland perhaps. Or maybe it's just that the logo is too prominent, and needs to mellow a bit..

I'm not that great at designing logos, and would do something too bland, or too wild..

My only other suggestions is to left-align your text on your About Me page, as it looks a bit unusual being centered.

I'll keep that in mind, but for now, getting the layout right is most important.

[robcartoons]

Hi Brendan,

Your work is definately bright and cheerful.

One thing I would get up as soon as possible would be how to contact you. Although most of the site is under construction you never know who might stumble across it and want to send you a message.

I'll check back later and check out the international scenes gallery when it's up and running.

I have a question. How did you set up your thumbnail gallery?

I working on a site to display my own cartoons but I haven't yet figured out a way to show an easy to access gallery. If you have any suggestions, I 'd greatly appreciate them as I'm only just starting out on building my own site.

Cheers, and keep up the good work!

Rob

[brendannz]

Originally Posted by robcartoons

Hi Brendan,

Your work is definately bright and cheerful.

Thanks.. I tried to make a minimalistic site, as Rebecca said, but ended up making a bland site, so I'm going to rework it.

One thing I would get up as soon as possible would be how to contact you. Although most of the site is under construction you never know who might stumble across it and want to send you a message.

Good idea, I may do this after I re-design

I'll check back later and check out the international scenes gallery when it's up and running.

Cool I'll try and do that next after doing the contact page.

I have a question. How did you set up your thumbnail gallery?

It's actually really simple. You know how to make an image a link? (if not, I can tell you) I just did all the images as links, and made the images 100 pixels high, (all of them) Easier than you'd think.

I working on a site to display my own cartoons but I haven't yet figured out a way to show an easy to access gallery. If you have any suggestions, I 'd greatly appreciate them as I'm only just starting out on building my own site.

What type of cartoons? comic strips with many panels? caricatures? cartoon characters? and what type of volume are you planning on displaying? I just checked your site, (answered some of my questions lol) and my feedback is that the site is cute, but it's too long, and it's too wide for some reason. I think it's just a matter of organising your content.. When you go to the cats site, it's picture dominated with text to support it, and I think your main feed in page should be that way too.

[brendannz]

Originally Posted by robcartoons

I working on a site to display my own cartoons but I haven't yet figured out a way to show an easy to access gallery. If you have any suggestions, I 'd greatly appreciate them as I'm only just starting out on building my own site.

Cheers, and keep up the good work!

Rob

Hey Rob, I've put a bit more thought into your site.

What I think you should do, is keep it lengthy if you want, but in your description have links along the way, eg when you say "I draw cartoons of monkeys, and dogs" then have links of the monkeys and dogs as you scroll along, does that make sense?

Brendan

[brendannz]

UPDATE:

To the few of you who were kind enough to give me helpful feedback to my site. I've taken on the advice, and if you click on "Gallery 1" you'll see the new look with feedback taken on board.

I think possibly the banners too big.. I might work on this.

[Rebecca800]

Nice, Brendan - love it!

[brendannz]

Originally Posted by Rebecca800

Nice, Brendan - love it!

Thanks! I'm happier with it. Do you think the banner should be smaller? maybe keep the width, but lower the height?

[ellie]

Hi Brendan,

I might be able to give you some tips, as I am a web designer (come other things) by trade. I am sorry but I am going to be brutally honest here

1. Did you know that most web users wont see most of your site straight off, most of it will be cut off, this is what most users 1024x768 will see http://img689.imageshack.us/img689/8869/1024.png So I would suggest you at least let them see a few thumbs, even if they are cut-off so the user knows to scroll down.

2. I think your design kind of cheapens your artwork - sorry to say. It looks like a bargain basement website, with the yellow, purple and blue text. So I would simplify the text and colours and make them smaller. The logo, can be simplified too, it doesn't really work well with the .com as part of your logo.

3. You have way too many areas. Users wont be bothered looking in all of them, they usually will go to the first two galleries and then will switch off, so I would suggest trying to combine some galleries, or even have all galleries in the one area, and use a scroller of some sort to browser through images.

4. I put together something like really quickly, like 5 min but it may illustrate to you how to simply things http://img697.imageshack.us/img697/2843/brendan.jpg This of course is cut-off to illustrate what it would like like on a 1024x768 browser

[brendannz]

[QUOTE=ellie;442526]

1. Did you know that most web users wont see most of your site straight off, most of it will be cut off, this is what most users 1024x768 will see http://img689.imageshack.us/img689/8869/1024.png So I would suggest you at least let them see a few thumbs, even if they are cut-off so the user knows to scroll down.

I'll keep that in mind. Do you think that having a "click on the image to see the next image" might counter this problem somewhat?

2. I think your design kind of cheapens your artwork - sorry to say. It looks like a bargain basement website, with the yellow, purple and blue text. So I would simplify the text and colours and make them smaller. The logo, can be simplified too, it doesn't really work well with the .com as part of your logo.

I redesigned it, where you go to Gallery 1. That's the new layout, but I still have the same issues in point 1. When I went for those colours, I was aiming for minimalism, and ended up with blandness. If you look at Gallery 1, you'll see I've probably still got a fair bit of work to do on it, but it's already a huge step forward (I'd like to think)

3. You have way too many areas. Users wont be bothered looking in all of them, they usually will go to the first two galleries and then will switch off, so I would suggest trying to combine some galleries, or even have all galleries in the one area, and use a scroller of some sort to browser through images.

I'll keep that in mind, but I have A LOT of artworks I want to display. I think the main thing is Gallery 1 should be specified as the Main gallery. I'll have a think about it.

Thanks for the great feedback.

[illuster]

Hey Brendan,

You make very nice paintings. I especially like it that you're not afraid to use colors!

As a graphic designer I'd have to agree with Ellie.
This is some advice, so I'm not going to pussyfoot around. It's not easy to make a decent website when you're new to it. But you got this far, which is quite an accomplishment in itself. And I'm sure that, with some more tweeking, it'll turn out excellent.

It's very important to keep your main-menu tidy and clear.
I'd make the menu-text much smaller. At this size, it makes the menu harder to read.
You could addapt the menu-structure the way Ellie suggests or you could turn it into this:
Gallery | Prints Store | About Me | Links | Contact

And then make an extra "Gallery-page" on which you specify the different galleries. As a typographical list or by showing 1 painting from each gallery along with the name of that gallery.
This way of navigating requires more clicks but it keeps your main-menu compact.

I think the big banner is fine on the homepage (although I would take out the logo as it's already at the top of the page). For the other pages, I'd make it less heigh or not use it at all. It pushes the content pretty far down and you might have enough images on the pages already.

You should take a look at the size of your images aswell. I opened the Orientalbayboatshed at the largest size. The image loaded pretty slowly because it is 648Kb. That's because it's resolution is way too high for web-use. 72 dpi is standard web resolution. This image is 210 dpi.
I managed to get it down to 183Kb by changing the resolution (and yet keeping it the same size) Sorry if it's a bit techi...

Get your contact-page up, so people can already get in contact about the work you have online.
But be careful about putting your e-mailadres on your site. As you'll get loads more spam that way.
If possible, use a contact-form. Check out Steve's contactpage for a good example.

As for color-use: Because your paintings are pretty colorful I'd keep the site very neutral. Black, grey, white, like Ellie suggests, works very well for this.
Or choose one color f.e. blue and only use one kind of blue in different degrees of darkness.
Use CSS to change the default colors of links (both text and image-links). Otherwise your carefully picked colorscheme will be overpowered by the cheap colored links.

And one last tip:
In your HTML, you can specify the size of your images. When you do this, Your gallery lay-out won't jump around while being loaded for the first time.

Keep up the good work!

[brendannz]

Thanks mate!

I'll take on board all your feedback. Just organising the information and the amount of paintings that I've completed is a mission in itself, but I'd really like to do this well.. Some of the feedback I've been given has been so obvious to me, that I can't believe I missed it, but that's how feedback works I think.

[ellie]

He he! Illustrator said it so much better than me

I agree you could really simplify that nav down to what Illust has suggest, but if you have hundreds of images then it might be worth while to break it up into a few galleries. Ah I yes...I see...yes have "gallery" and then go to a sub section. Lots of different ways to put it together.

I also agree because you're images are so colourful the actual website can be very subtle, so as not to detract from the actual images themselves.

No I see no problem with an arrow, or "click on next image".

You should also keep nav consistent on each page, the layout and fonts colours should not change, otherwise it confuses the user.

[brendannz]

[QUOTE=ellie;442565]

Yeah, honestly, I've got to where I am today with my painting, with a few kicks in the balls along the way , and I'm still developing my artwork.

I'm a bit of a rookie when it comes to web design, but I enjoy it, so hopefully I'll get the hang of it.

I agree you could really simplify that nav down to what Illust has suggest, but if you have hundreds of images then it might be worth while to break it up into a few galleries.

I'm pretty sure I will do.. The thing is I want to put my masses of work up.. BUT some galleries must take priority. I'll have a careful think about this one, how I arrange my artworks.

I also agree because you're images are so colourful the actual website can be very subtle, so as not to detract from the actual images themselves.

I tried to be subtle first up, and I ended up being bland , I might do a 180 pixel high banner up top, we'll see..

You should also keep nav consistent on each page, the layout and fonts colours should not change, otherwise it confuses the user.

The only reason it's inconsistent at the moment, is because it's not fully designed yet, it's in progress. But once I've got the layout sorted I'll make sure it's consistent.

Honestly, most of the artist sites I know, (local artists I know from galleries) really suck. But their website is really just to support their gallery pressence, but I want to have a good web pressence, so I'll keep working at this one.

Thanks again for your feedback.

[ellie]

[QUOTE=brendannz;442567]

Originally Posted by ellie

Honestly, most of the artist sites I know, (local artists I know from galleries) really suck. But their website is really just to support their gallery pressence, but I want to have a good web pressence, so I'll keep working at this one.

Thanks again for your feedback.

Well that's where you can be different

In Australia, artist are becoming more switched on that they have to design their site to a certain standard. I would assume that will be the general trend with most countries in years to come.

[illuster]

Originally Posted by brendannz

Thanks mate!

I'll take on board all your feedback. Just organising the information and the amount of paintings that I've completed is a mission in itself, but I'd really like to do this well.. Some of the feedback I've been given has been so obvious to me, that I can't believe I missed it, but that's how feedback works I think.

I know the feeling. When you've been working on something for hours, you go a little blind for your own "mistakes". Which makes it very hard to notice the obvious... So that's a good time to get some feedback.

I've made a few websites now and I'm still surprised by the amount of time you have to put into one to get it to look right and work properly. They are fidgety things…

So don't get overwhelmed by our feedback, just take it one step at a time, you'll get there!

[James81]

Site isn't loading for me. Getting the old "Cannot find server" error.

[brendannz]

[QUOTE=ellie;442576]

Originally Posted by brendannz

Well that's where you can be different

In Australia, artist are becoming more switched on that they have to design their site to a certain standard. I would assume that will be the general trend with most countries in years to come.

When I say they suck, it's not that they're badly designed, it's just that they're simplistic, often just 10 images, (when they paint WAY more) a small bio, contact info..

I want to have a big online pressence, so I'm going to have to work on it. I'm going to have to think of a way to organise lots of paintings, and also be able to update, and add new ones when I need to easily..

I'm sure I'll get there

[brendannz]

Originally Posted by James81

Site isn't loading for me. Getting the old "Cannot find server" error.

That really sucks. If you'd like to see my artwork, it's on deviantart here; captainmania's Gallery

But you won't be able to give website feedback.

[brendannz]

[QUOTE=illuster;442584]

I know the feeling. When you've been working on something for hours, you go a little blind for your own "mistakes". Which makes it very hard to notice the obvious... So that's a good time to get some feedback.

Yeah, I was trying to be minimalistic and ended up being bland.. But I'm enjoying learning this, even though it's a bit frustrating.. Plus the new layout on gallery 1's already a huge improvement, and there's lots more room for improvement, so I'm sure I'll get there..

I've made a few websites now and I'm still surprised by the amount of time you have to put into one to get it to look right and work properly. They are fidgety things…

Definitely, learning this coding was fidgety and frustrating in itself..

So don't get overwhelmed by our feedback, just take it one step at a time, you'll get there!

yep, I want to get the hang of this, and make an awesome site!

[brendannz]

Actually the best artist site I know of, is this one here

Natalia Fabia's site;
Natalia Fabia

So I might try and organise my artworks a similar way..

Her paintings are probably the closest thing to heaven...

[ar81]

The big colorful banner actually distracts me from your arts.
The site is too cluttered, confusing because of the banner.
I think the banner should have flat color with text, or at most it could have a color gradient.

[brendannz]

Originally Posted by ar81

The big colorful banner actually distracts me from your arts.
The site is too cluttered, confusing because of the banner.
I think the banner should have flat color with text, or at most it could have a color gradient.

I'll keep working on it, cheers..

[James81]

Link finally works for me.

Anyway, the art itself is pretty frikin cool. You have mad talent.

The site design, however, is kinda...meh. With as many links as you have, I think you need to find a design that has them along the side rather than on the top.

[brendannz]

Originally Posted by James81

Anyway, the art itself is pretty frikin cool. You have mad talent.

Thanks

The site design, however, is kinda...meh. With as many links as you have, I think you need to find a design that has them along the side rather than on the top.

I'm going to reduce the links next, and then reduce the size of the links. I'ts still a work in progress

[brendannz]

**UPDATE**

I've worked on the design here;

Please check out; Brendan Grant Artwork . Com

And then go to "Recent Works" up top.. Feedback still valued. The design may not be there yet, but it's definitely improving..

[robcartoons]

Hi Brendan,

I like the change - nice banner and less cluttered buttons than before.

Thanks for the tips regarding the gallery, I'll give it a go during my next building session.

Cheers,

Rob

[jendoe]

Hi Brendan -

I love your art too - very vibrant and colorful! And I think the most recent banner is perfect, it seems very representative of your art to me. Pretty!

It's a small thing, but I don't think anyone has mentioned it yet - the footer area of your site could use a little work, at the very bottom - it wraps around the page for a few lines. It would look neater if it were intentionally organized/wrapped - if that makes sense.

Such as (imagine these centered)

Gallery 1 | Gallery 2 | Gallery 3
Gallery 4 | Gallery 5
<blank line>
copyright/etc.

For the copyright sign - I think you are fine using the word, but you can get the sign using special "ascii codes" (look here for more codes: HTML Codes - Table of ascii characters and symbols )

These give you the html code (and sometimes a name you can also use) that tell a web browser to display a special character.

To display a copyright symbol, you'd type "&copy;" (without the quotation marks).

Congrats on getting the site up!

[brendannz]

Hi Brendan -

I love your art too - very vibrant and colorful! And I think the most recent banner is perfect, it seems very representative of your art to me. Pretty!

Awesome! I wanted to make it less dominant.

It's a small thing, but I don't think anyone has mentioned it yet - the footer area of your site could use a little work, at the very bottom - it wraps around the page for a few lines. It would look neater if it were intentionally organized/wrapped - if that makes sense.

Such as (imagine these centered)

Gallery 1 | Gallery 2 | Gallery 3
Gallery 4 | Gallery 5
<blank line>
copyright/etc.

For the copyright sign - I think you are fine using the word, but you can get the sign using special "ascii codes" (look here for more codes: HTML Codes - Table of ascii characters and symbols )

These give you the html code (and sometimes a name you can also use) that tell a web browser to display a special character.

To display a copyright symbol, you'd type "&copy;" (without the quotation marks).

That was actually an error I thought I'd fix up later on, and get the design sussed first. I put </br> in, and for some reason it didn't display it, so I did <br /> and it did!

Congrats on getting the site up!

Thanks very much!