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How To Showcase your design Beautifully and Professionally

More and more fine arts professionals are looking to the Net to study the work of developing and mid-career artists. Why? As it is easier than dealing with large volumes of paper-portfolios. It is also better for the artist as there's substantial cost and time involved in sending out multiple paper and slide portfolios to studios and dealers.

Therefore what's important in a website? What do arts pros look for? Remember the times that you've paid a visit to a top notch art gallery or museum? You were probably aware of a feeling of beauty and refinement and revealed that the art actually captured your imagination or incited a strong feeling in you.

Did you understand that only part of the reason you liked the art was the art itself? The other part of the picture that your subconscious drank in while you were enjoying the champagne was the delicate work of the Curator. Curating is a form of art in its own right: look closer next time you are in a fine gallery. It's no different when you showcase your work online. A really excellent artist's internet site will create an ambiance of beauty, subtlety, or poser around the work. It may shock you or bring a feeling of harmony. It might make you feel energized.

How is this done? It's easy. A good artist website designer has many of the same qualities as a museum curator. There are things that your eye won't see on the website, but your subconscious will - subtle choices of color, layout, font, kerning, and structure all build to form an ambiance for the art. Designers and curators understand how to do this from years of design studies and experience, along with talent! These are some points to consider when you are planning the visual design of your website. Designers frequently use these themes as a starting point.

- Keep it simple and stylish
- Keep the concentration on the art itself
- Use neutral background colors that compliment the work. Good colors are black, charcoal, white, and pale shades. Other colors can look great depending on the art. Avoid bright colours which draw the attention away from the work
- Don't smother the outward appearance of the art or distract with a site that looks too "busy".
- Don't have advertisements all over your portfolio - it devalues the art and your image. We suggest that you get rid of advertising on your portfolio or if you've got to, it should be confined to a section concentrated on resources or links.

As a general rule, we advocate against having large numbers of art-works on your site. Select your very best work, just as you would select slides for a regular portfolio, and add new work as it becomes available. Some portfolio websites will permit you to put up as many as 100 pieces of your work, but we think its too distracting. Lots of the sites we design have 20 or fewer works on view. Think about this: when was the last time you went to a top-end studio that had lots of pieces showing?

Avoid designer-ish effects such as flash files unless they are executed efficiently and truly compliment the art. In the time it requires to play your exotic flash-based entry page your visitor might have moved on.

If you follow these straightforward guiding principles, you will be well on the way to a good artists portfolio.

A good website should also showcase the artist herself. Selling art is about somebody buying your art AND the image they feel from you as an artist. A well executed website may never replace a meeting with a collector or dealer, nevertheless it can be the significant factor that piques their interest and results in the meeting. The value of that is enormous.

Your artist's web site is the foundation on which you will build your complete online-marketing strategy. Each promoting tool and program will seek to draw attention to your portfolio studio. It's worth putting in the investment in time, thought and money to make it great!

Article Source: GardenGap.com

About the Author

Daniel Tardent is the business director for Beautiful Artist Websites, a boutique design studio based in Santa Monica, California. Beautiful Artist Websites have expertise in designing premium artist porfolios promoting solutions for artists, photographers, galleries, and other creatives.