Opinions or crits? Artist website...

[FrankieTDouglas]

How's it going? I ended up with a 3 day weekend and no travel plans. Not really knowing what to do with myself with such a wide stretch of time, I decided to work more. So in three days, I decided to sketch, scan, design, code, and format new content for a complete website redesign. The site is for the photo/video work that I create, and a bit of a promotional tool as an artist. Curious to hear any feedback you might have, be it on the design, layout, etc. It can still be a work in progress. Thanks!

http://www.andybloxham.com/

 

[SrWebDeveloper]

The design sure is original, and nice photos btw in terms of your work.

Some things worth consideration to change:

Make more prominent the link to view the gallery - either move it top the top or make it a menu item, add some CSS to change pointer to arrow so folks know its a valid link.

Why hide the contact form in the about page? At least make it a menu item so people can more easily contact you from within the web site. In the contact form add in a few options for subject such as "Site Feedback" or "Consult" or something to encourage clients to contact you.

Use the title attribute in links and the alt attribute in src tags for images - not just for accessibility but to add brief comments explaining what that link does.

The right well with the Facebook widget --- too big, use at least 1/3 of that space with a random thumbnail sampling of your gallery pics (say 12 pics, 3 rows of 4 across, small images), with the link "View Complete Gallery" or similar below that. Each thumb links to its parent full sized pic or gallery. Put all this on the top of the well, Facebook stuff underneath.

Nice job.

 

[designs216]

The visuals are engaging but I think you've got too many hard edges and boxes that halt visual movement across the layout. It's strange that the hand sketch theme in the top right corner abruptly ends and the mechanical boxes motif takes over from there. I'd also like to see more variety of type, much of the text is nearly the same size and face. Although establishing a good grid is paramount, it gets to be boring if all elements fall strictly inside that grid, which is what I see here. Moving forward, I would say push the hand sketch theme further as it differentiates your site from all the others in our WordPress world. Also, don't be so strict about the yellow and black theme. The trick is to get the interface to recede and be easy to use, simply framing your content and letting the content be the star of the show.

 

[Consultant]

Like it.

Congrats to getting on PDN.

The gray background of "project" etc menus looks like bad compression artifact.

Minor technical issue: some or all large images don't have height and width tags.

 

[FrankieTDouglas]

Thanks for the comments! After finishing up another project, I'm now returning back to the coding to do some housecleaning on it, and using suggestions made from you guys.

 

[Les Kern]

A bit disjointed... doesn't have a unifying theme... just 5 boxes floating in space. Where does my eye go?? Doesn't show off your talent as an artist. Consider adding tyour own designs to tie it all together. Do you really want Facebook to have such a prominent position on the main page? Ew. I like the gallery pages. great way to present your work, which is excellent in my opinion.