Overview
When my client first reached out to me, she indicated that she already had a current website for her art, but that she wanted a redesigned website that was modern, simplistic and user friendly. Her current website was dark, had issues with its layout, did not clearly display content and information, and was not optimized for mobile devices. She also wanted e-commerce integration for fine art prints, and her current website did not have that feature.
Design
For some design inspiration around Kristina's new website design, she sent me a couple of already existing artist websites that had layouts and design that she loved.
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For this, she sent me Jen Starling and Lola Montejo's websites. Both had minimalistic, clean, modern designs with white backgrounds and dark font.
Guidelines
Kristina gave me the following guidelines for designing her website:
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All genres of artwork to be clearly displayed on dedicated sub pages with price, product info, and contact button
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E-commerce integration for art prints
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Events page with clickable links
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About page with artist bio as well as artist CV
Problems & Solutions
During the creation process of Kristina's new website, I ran into a few moments where my design and problem solving skills were tested. When designing each page, I wanted to make sure that I was not only meeting the needs of my client, but also thinking about her users.
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Below I will explain the features that were wanted by the client, how I met those needs, as well as the ways I made those features user friendly.
Contact
Kristina had specific requirements for how she wanted clients to be able to purchase artwork from her site. She wanted e-commerce integration for her fine art prints, but for her large scale original paintings, Kristina wanted her clients to contact her directly for purchasing info.
Initially Kristina wanted me to place her email address in the header information for each page. When thinking of the users, I decided to create a "Contact" button on each page that opens an email directly to Kristina. This avoided users needing to copy and paste her email address to get in contact and instead made contacting her a simple one click motion
Gallery View
When deciding how to display art pieces that were not going to be for sale through e-commerce, I had to think outside the box a bit. Kristina had multiple pictures of each piece that she wanted integrated. Instead of building individual pages for each product, I created a slideshow option.
Each product shows all pictures included in a slideshow view that changes every 2 seconds. This design met the needs of the client, as well as the users. Instead of the user needing to click on the item to see all of the information as well as pictures of the product, all information is cleanly and conveniently placed right on the page.
Artist CV
When creating Kristina's "About Me" page, Kristina wanted an artist bio, artists statement, and an artist CV all on one page. When formatting all the content on her "About Me" page, I ran into issues cleanly and accurately displaying all of the information in her very long CV. After trying a few different design options I decided to create a download button for her CV instead. I built Kristina a downloadable PDF document CV, and attached it to a button on her "About Me" page. Now with clicking a single button, users and potential gallery managers viewing Kristina's website, could quickly and easily download her artist CV at the click of a button.
Mobile Optimization
Kristina's previous website, was not optimized for viewing on mobile devices, and with a lot of her clientele being driven to her website through social media platforms, most of which were viewing her website from their phone or tablet, this posed many accessibility issues.
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I made sure that every page and function was clearly formatted and displayed for easy viewing on all mobile devices. Now Kristina's users could easily see all of her products, upcoming events, workshops, as well as purchase prints.
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