An Illustrator’s website – the most imprtant asset?
Here at Art Associates, we count our on-line architectural illustration portfolio as one of our most important assets. We have included much functionality and many features to make our website as comfortable and user friendly as possible. We have recently updated the site to include a new slide-show function as well as commenting capabilities. We have also introduced the blog that you are now reading.
So, why a blog from Art Associates?
Our blog will serve many purposes. This particular post is not only our launch post, but I will outline some of the features and capabilities of our website. We will post articles about new projects that have recently been added to our portfolio. We may post about up-and-coming projects and other topics that may lend themselves to a blog format.
Our Portfolio
As an architectural illustrator, our work lies firmly in the visual arena. Our portfolio is probably the most important part of our website. No matter where you are on our site, the front page to the portfolio is one click away, right in the main navigation bar at the top of the page. Clicking any link labeled “Portfolio” will get you here:
This is an “album page” it contains no artwork itself, it contains categories and sub-categories of artwork organized by differing styles or technique. Each category or sub-category is represented by an image and a book icon next to it’s title. Categories (albums) will not have keywords under them. Clicking on the image is one way to move to a more specific section of our site.
“Thumbnail pages”do contain artwork, but only in a small format. Clicking on the image will bring you to an “image page”. Hand-selected key words are centered below each thumbnail image. Keywords are one of the best ways of grouping renderings by subject matter rather than by technique. For example, viewing keyword “houses” shows all styles of renderings who’s main subject is a house. Keywords are click-able, however the page displaying the results of the keyword matches are missing some features, most notably the slide-show function.
An “image page” contains a medium sized image of a specific piece of artwork as well as several forms of navigation used for moving through the current album. You can navigate using those “micro thumbs” to the right of the image, or you could use the “first”, “previous”, “next” and “last” buttons at the top of the image. You could also go back to the thumbnail page to select a new image to view. Centered above the image are two icons. The first one is for leaving a comment. Comments are posted once they are approved by us (to avoid spam). The second button is to view a full sized image in a new window. This image usually measures 1000 pixels in its larger dimension. Click on the image to dismiss the window and go back to the “image page”.
An Image page
A better way to group renderings by subject is to use the search box, a bright, white text box located on every page in our portfolio. Using the search box gets you to an intermediate page. You can refine your search results, view all results, or “View these results in a slide-show”. You could also search for “renderings” (no quotes) to view all renderings in one huge slide-show with over 300 images! You must use the keywords found under the thumbnails to get results in your search (sorry we are not Google).
Well, we hope you’ve enjoyed reading our blog and we hope you will have a stronger grasp of the use of our website.
Till next time,
aa
