(website critique at the bottom of page) (My own reflections in italics)
Reflection of whole lecture:
Having all the important information that is needed to build a website laid out on a plate is incredibly useful. It makes you think about your own website at the same time and consider whether yours meets the standards, and what I will need to change moving forward. We also looked briefly at established photographers own websites to give ideas for different designs, styles, and to help choose what provider is best suited to us, WordPress, format, Squarespace. It is important I try and fit my website with all my branding to making it recognisable and coherent. After this lecture, I have decided that in the future (over summer) I will be changing from WordPress to format. Format has a lot more templates suited to my style, which I just can’t find on WordPress, it can be quite restricting. So I plan to do a big revamp of my website over the summer.
- It’s about you recognising what kind of online presence you want
- You are image makers, no web designers
Online presence should be:
- Visually appropriate
- Easy to navigate
- Regularly updated
- Function well
- Metadata – Need to add copyright to your image, NOT a watermark
- Use low res images
- remember your website will look different depending on how it is accessed, phone, tablet, laptop, monitor
Challenges of Print/ Web Contexts:
- Static content of print / fluid and interactive mode of web
- Haptic quality / experiential content
- Variation in media (tablet/phone/screen/retina)
- RGB / CMYK
- Image size
- Immersive content
Content Analysis: Who / What / How?
- Who are you? / Is your audience?
- What is your OP for?
- What kind of work do you produce?
- How do you want your work to be encountered?
Who are you?
- (Positioning statement) – This puts into words the type and style of images you produce, the subjects you focus on and the audience for those images. (editorial, commercial etc)
- Express your personality, showcase your unique value, helps you choose images and present a coherent body of work
What..?
- Do you do / offer (benefit to client / viewer of site)
- Fo you need a potential client / buyer / agent to know about you
- Do you want them to see
- portfolio (best shots and thematic projects)
- Blog (blog is easily updated and not static)
- Do you want them to do next? ( hire you, buy you, remember you)
How…?
- To contact you (email / phone number / other contact details / cv)
- Twitter / Linkedin / Instagram – These sites need to be used in a professional capacity if sharing them for people to see, they need to be controlled and not overtly personal
- I have got separate Instagram accounts for personal photos and professional photography page, the personal account kept private. I also have chosen to make a separate email address http://www.isobelpercyphotography@outlook.co.uk, so it is just used for ‘professional’ emails, and it is obvious to the person emailing that it is linked to photography themed emails. It also just makes it easier to separate personal emails to professional emails.
Owning your website:
Buy a Domain name and hosting package – deciding on how you are going to brand yourself, your name? as a company? or a ‘clever’ title. – I decided to brand my self just using my name .. http://www.isobelpercy.com and like I said previously on my email its ‘isobelpercyphotography’
- Create your site – by either buying services of a web designer or D.I.Y
- Plan / design your site on paper / on screen (selecting images and deciding on key info) Selecting a theme. I have chosen a theme for my website, but I’m not 100% happy with the layout, I need to test around with themes more (just selecting themes on WordPress) but I think my website needs to look more professional, I am not happy with the font or the size of the writing ‘Isobel Percy’, so I either need to see if it is customisable or change my theme, I do like the horizontal scrolls but am yet to find one. At the moment I am happy with the content and information on my website, it is the design I need to work on now that my website has what is needed. Decide on personal branding, logo, typeface, colour scheme.
- Site check list:
- Essential – fast loading? simple, logical, consistent navigation, large images or full screen user option, images have explanation or caption, crisp clear image quality, contact details always visible, search option?
- Useful – Gallery of thumbnails, licensing, purchasing options, link to request high res comps
- Think twice – music slide shows with no controls, long animated intros, slow loading, links to personal Facebook or other accounts
- Test and check on different browsers and platforms
- Launch and user test
- Maintain – regularly update at least once a month, add or change images, written content such as publications, exhibitions
Critiquing websites-
Rachel Wolfe – Rachel’s website is very clean, simple and easy to navigate, on the home page she has a ‘slideshow’ gallery of her images which move by their self but you can change to what ever picture you like using the little dots at the bottom of the images when you hover over the image. When you hover over the image, the caption of the image as well as the little dots to select what image you want to see shows up, but they appear on top of each other so it is actually quite hard to read the captions as they are in a thin white font, (as shown in the second image below). Rachel’s name/identity is clearly shown with its own space, in a bigger font than all the other text, but still isn’t massively big. No matter what page you are looking at on her website it always says ‘Rachel Wolfe Studio’, which is common with probably most websites, but as hers is positioned below the header, it isn’t tucked away in the top corner. She also has her social media links and copyright information clearly on display. 
Wolfe has a header at the top with all her subsections, she has a lot of subheadings, but once you hover over the headings you see she needs to split up her info/work that much because she has a vast amount of work/info.
The front page looks very simple and bare, but as soon as you go to the headings there is quite a lot to look through, so I quite like that she hasn’t made the front page really busy, it is easy on the eye. All of the pages through clicking through the subheadings are set out in a blog scrolling style. The only page that isn’t is the home page. She still has a slideshow that moves on its own for each image, I personally like to see images next to each other so you can see how they all fit together as a project, but you cant do this with Wolfe’s work. There is quite a lot of text on each of her pages, but I think that is because it is more of a blog style website instead of a portfolio style. I didn’t really feel intrigued to read the text as there was quite a lot of it, and was laid out like an essay, not really grabbing my attention.
Henrik Knudsen – I really liked Henrik’s website as soon as I clicked on it. Straight away you are greeted a great big image, which changes image on a slideshow loop. I like that he has made the initial image big. I feel that the image could be kept on the screen a bit longer as the slideshow moves quite quickly, but it is only the homepage. His homepage is easily navigable, and clear. With the slideshow of images it tells you the name of the image as well as the project is it from, as well as giving you the option for prev/next and an option to view it as thumbnails if you prefer a different way to view it. There is a banner across the top which you click if you want to sign up for his newsletter, this isn’t too in your face or annoying, you can click ‘x’ if you want it to disappear. I think it is a good way for people to sign up for you newsletter because they see it as soon as they click on the website, they don’t have to search for it. His navigation bar is simple and clear, divided helpfully as well as having his social media tabs in view, equally not too in your face, it’s subtle.
His website also alters well when you are viewing on a smaller window (as shown below) if you are wanting to view other tabs at the same time. So his homepage slide show turns into a galley where you scroll down, with the images still reasonably big, so websites images go increasingly smaller, even if you haven’t made the window too much smaller. His side bar navigation turns into a tab called ‘Menu’, this enables the images to reach the edge of the page, as the navigation was previously on the left side.
Knudsen has split is work up helpfully to direct different audiences, and then split up for eg. ‘projects’ and has all the project titles below. So it doesn’t take you to a ‘project’ page where you can see all the projects at once which would be less helpful and most likely too busy.
Each page is set out like a thumbnail gallery, which I like as you get to see all the images together as a project and then you just click on an image to enlarge it and you can either go back and select another image to view or use prev/next which is convenient. The only thing I can say negatively is that some of the images take a little while to load, so some of the images are half loaded, one half the image one half grey space, although it might not necessarily be his fault, it could be my internet. 
Lastly he has a ‘News’ tab, which is a blog style page where he can keep people up to date with any new work, news etc! So it easy for people to keep up and know more about him and his work. 
Isobel Percy 