OK I've spent today designing a website to display Shona MacPherson's art. It need to be really simple so that the art is allowed to speak for itself. I've been trough a few different stages and I think the most important thing is that the information and navigation is organised logically and that I develop a template that will work across many different pages containing different types of information.
First i quickly scetched out some simple layouts by hand, considering what I thought might be the best way of ordering the content.
After that I moved onto photoshop to start mocking up some designs.
The 2 images above are the first layout I designed. They are OK but not perfect the layout of the info and navigation feels a bit clunky. I have used Gill Sans light across the rest of Shona's identity but this isn't a web-safe font so I used Helvetica on this particular design. I don't think it fits in with the rest of the identity, it looks too modern and bold.
Above are 2 images from my second proposal for her website. Aesthetically it is probably my favorite design. However I have set the images so they would be page background images and while this looks nice I really don't like it as a way of displaying images that you actually want to look at in detail. Also for the splash/mission statement part of the site I have used Times italic, while it looks nice it moves away from the original identity I design and want the website to be consistent with.
Above are 2 images from the 3rd version of the site I layed out. Its quite similar to the first but I wanted to make the title a bit bolder. It also uses Times which is a web safe font but I think it feels much more consistant with the rest of the identity; more ornate and elegant. The overall design looks fine but the way the info is organised isn't that elegant and I think I can do better.
The 5 images above are from the final version of the site and the one that I am going to run with. The navigation and way the info is laid out is the simplest of them all, but that's why I think its the best. The way I have laid it out means that the template will work well for all the different pages on the site.
Above you can see the guides I used to organsie teh site. They are really simple and I think that is why the design seems to work so well.
I also tested out my final layout on a black background. I actually think it works really well and makes the images really stand out. It's not entirely consistent with the rest of the identity but that might be OK.
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