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The Best Way To Showcase your design Wonderfully 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.

So , what is critical in a site? What do fine art curators look for? Remember the times that you have visited a really art gallery or museum? You were probably tuned into a sense of beauty and elegance and found that the art truly caught your imagination or provoked an intense feeling in you.

Did you realize that only a part of the reason why you liked the art was the art itself? The other part of the picture that your subconscious drank in while you were enjoying the bubbly was the sophisticated work of the Curator. Curating is a kind of art in its own right: look in more detail the next time you are in a fine gallery. It's no different when you showcase your work on the web. A really glorious artist's website will create an ambiance of beauty, elegance, or puzzle round the work. It may shock you or bring a sense of harmony. It may lead you to feel more alive.

How is this done? It's simple. A good artist site designer has plenty of the same qualities as a museum curator. There are things that your eye will not see on the internet site, but your subconscious will - delicate decisions of colour, layout, font, kerning, and structure all build to create an ambiance for the art. Designers and curators know the way to do this from years of training and experience, together with talent! Here are some points to think about when you're planning the visual design of your site. Designers often use these themes as a kick off point.

- Keep it simplistic and classy
- Keep the focus on the art itself
- Use neutral background colours that compliment the work. Good selections are black, charcoal, white, and off-white shades. Other colours can look good depending on the art. Avoid bright colors which draw the viewer away from the work
- Don't crowd the look of the art or distract with a site that looks too "busy".
- Do not have ads all over your website - it cheapens the art and your image. We recommend that you avoid advertising on your site, or if you have to, it should be limited to a section targeted on resources or links.

As a rule, we recommend against having lots of art-works on your portfolio. Choose your absolute best work, just as you would choose slides for a regular portfolio, and add new work as it becomes available. Some portfolio websites will allow you to put up as much as 100 pieces of your work, but we think its too distracting. Plenty of the sites we design have 20 or less works on show. Think about this: when was the last time you went to an upscale gallery that had hundreds 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 easy guidelines, you'll be well on the way to a good artists website.

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, however it could be the main factor that piques their interest and leads to the meeting. The value of that is enormous.

Your artist's website is the foundation on which you may build your complete online-marketing method. Every selling tool and program will seek to draw attention to your website gallery. 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 marketing solutions for artists, photographers, galleries, and other creatives.