Topic: site for an artist

This is a site I am doing for an artist. She does watercolors in Brazil, of Brazilian landscapes and street scenes. At this time I am just working on the design; yes I know the content is practically non-existent and that will be worked on later. Please review the design; I'm open to any suggestions/criticisms you have for the colors, font, layout, navigation, and overall feel.

The victim

The water at the top is really good, maybe you should make the band at the bottom of the page similar, or at least the same colour to keep it consistent. It kinda looks like the page has three seperate pieces/sections.
I dont really have anything else to suggest, just try to keep to a few different colours throughout the whole site, maybe a few shades of blue.

I'm glad you like the water. The client wanted a full water background, with text over it (yech!); I was able to convince her that this would be better.

I made a couple of small changes: different link color, and I entered some text into the layer so that you could see one of my problems with it. This site is going to contain a thumbnail gallery and an order for at some point, and I'm having trouble setting up the layer to a decent size. I want to use layers so that there can be a scroll-able area, but the rest of the site maintains the same size. However, the layer seems too small at 1024 by 768, but it fills the screen perfectly at 600 by 800.

Any suggestions?

[This message has been edited by Odd Cat (edited 07-03-2002).]

Yeah, the layer is definitely too small on 1024x768--too much white space over on the right...

I hate to say this, but if you want to have a scrollable area on the right you might be better off using frames. That way the scrollable area would fill the remainder of the page no matter what size the browsing area is. I personally hate frames, but for what you want to do here it might be the way to go (I'm guessing that the thumbnails on the right will bring up the pic on the left...). A lot of the original complaints about frames have been addressed since they were introduced, so they're not as bad as they used to be. And, despite my prejudice, I think that they can work if used properly.

If you tried to do it with a layer it could get complex (translation: I can't help you there). Give frames a thought.

Oh, and I agree with Hugh--making the bottom bar blue would be safe. Or you might want to pick a color from the artist's work (you might even consider only using colors from the artist's work for the site; this would probably give the site a very soft look, since you wouldn't have such dark blues or purples). The orange (peach?) background behind the picture looks like it might have come from the far rooftop on the left side of the street... and it works nicely, I think.





Cell 270

Actually, I have now turned to frames on this site (I haven't published the frames version yet; it'll be up soon). I too have a long standing prejudice against frames, but you're right; they are perfect for this site. And yeah, they've come a long way. I know layers are supposed to work in Netscape, but they still act freaky when I use the Netscape browser I have at work (4.7). Frames work fine in that browser.

You're right; I am sampling colors out of her pictures, and choosing the closest web safe version. Since she does the bright watercolors, I wanted to have a bright, fresh, colorful feel. The purple is actually sampled from a different painting than the one displayed. Most of her paintings have that purple in them, and she commented that Rio deJaneiro (sp?) is "a very purple place", so I wanted to include that as well. I'll get the other paintings up soon so that you can see it all.

By the way, it sucks to try really hard to have clients and build your portfolio while also working a "day" job. I can't wait until site design is my "day" job.

I can't wait to see the other pics--the one you have up there now is great. She's obviously a very talented artist. Incidentally, purple happens to be my favorite color... now I want to go visit Rio de Janeiro!

If I may make a suggestion about the colors... don't bother selecting the nearest "web safe" color (read this article for an interesting take on web safe colors). You'll be sacrificing a lot of the subtlety that makes the paintings so vibrant. Not that many people browse with only 256 colors anymore (check out the color depth stats from thecounter.com). The way I see it, if a person is browsing with only 256 colors, the browser is going to wreak havoc with those paintings (try taking that painting into Photoshop and saving it with a web palette) and your colors anyway--why penalize those who can enjoy more colors by using only the web safe colors (which aren't going to exactly match the colors in the paintings)?

This is just my two cents, of course, but given the subject, color is really important for your site. I say go for the gusto, and let the browsers take care of the 4% who only have 256 colors.

Understood.

But at the same time, last quarter at school, a guy turned in his final project, and the background on his website was, well, a really unflattering color of brown. There's a name for that color of brown, but I won't go in to that here. Anyway, he insisted that it was red, or at least that's what it was at his house. Our computers at school are pretty decent though, and we were seeing a pretty sick-looking brown. So yeah, I go with the nearest web safe usually just because visually, it is almost always close enough, and it sure beats ending up with a color that is not at all what you intended.

Also, like most clients, she wants her site to be available to "everybody!", so I'm trying to stay user friendly.

Hmmm, I too like the top water but no one has mentioned how badly the other colors clash. http://www.webwhirlers.com/colors/ A little study here will help.

Allewyn

Hm. I don't feel that they clash. The blue may be a bit bold against the orange, but I wouldn't say that they clash. Blue and orange are complimentary colors, after all. And I think the purple works out nicely as well.

But I'm not trying to be closed-minded; does anyone else get the sense that they clash?

Actually, I think the colors go very well together--I like the feel of them, and they work technically too.

Good point about colors not always being the same everywhere, but it sounds like you friend had his monitor set up wrong. Gamma settings, among others, might have played a part. The point I was trying to make, though, was that web safe colors aren't always "safe." That being the case, I figured you might want to allow yourself some more freedom in color choice. However, I don't see anything terribly wrong with the colors you've got, so go with whatever makes you happy (or, more importantly, whatever makes your client happy). No matter which colors you do end up using, though, I would still look at it on a number of different platforms to see what you've got.

Keep us updated.

Yes; I try to look at a web site I'm building on as many machines as I can.

As for the Gamma settings, good point. He said he sampled the color straight out of a jpg photo, and that too can be a problem.

Okay, so I promised to show you the completed version once I had it ready:

watercolorsofbrazil.com

I still haven't done the pricing and ordering page, and there's some fine tuning that needs doing. But this is the finished design, with the frames.

I find the 'white' to be a bit glaring and perhaps out of place up against the colours which I quite like...and I assume some of the 'fine tuning' you refer to includes the navigation at the bottom of the page...but other than that I like the feel of the whole thing and I really like image 2 in Gallery 1. Had I any money... it would be mine! <bg>

I need to get her prices up there; these are reproductions, and therefore not that expensive! I believe that image is around $25.

I take it that would be 25 US dollars. Unfortunately that converts to $4257.65 Canadian and waaay outta my league! <lol>

Very nice, Odd Cat. After having been away from it for a while and coming back now, I can say that I do like it. NoJive may have a point with the white, though. I think it works, but some might find it too big of a contrast. Have you fiddled around with pastels in that area?

As for the pics... I wish I could paint like that. My personal favorite is Image 1 in Gallery II--I just love those coastal scenes. And if that's what Brazil looks like, I definitely have to visit some day! Oh, and does she have any more paintings?

Whoa! I had no idea that the difference between Canadian and US Dollars was so great right now! That's ridiculous!

Yup, she has more paintings. She will be sending me the images by mail once she returns to Brazil. We will also be adding originals to the site at that time.

lol@^^ It's somewhere around 63 - 65 cents... which is still ridiculous!