Website analysis and inspiration
09:57To help me when designing my website, I did some research to see how other practitioners present their work online. Things I plan to look at are how they separate their work on a menu, how easy it is to navigate, and how the images themselves are shown in galleries.
Lauren Engel's website takes you to a home page which requires you to click on her name to enter the site. Although it is impactful and makes you remember her name more than you may have done before, its time wasting and immediately annoys me a little. Definitely will not be using this on my own site.
Her menu is split into Personal, Travel, work, bio and BLOG. She doesn't have a contact me page, but instead her email is at the bottom of the menu itself on every page. I like the travel section of her website, it makes me reconsider removing mine from my website, and instead adding more images to it. I also like the idea of adding a blog to my website, maybe over the summer, as it will need updating quite often to keep it current. Maybe about my trips away and images I take there. I also like the idea of the images in my blog being on film? as it seems more personal and considered.
To navigate, her images are again split by client name, which is a good idea however I am slighting lacking on my client base at where I am now. But this is definitely something to think about in the future. To slide between each image however, there are no navigation arrows and you have to slide across on the trackpad on your computer, something that took me a second or two to figure out. I plan to have navigation arrows on my website to make this easier.
Cameron Hammond's a published photographer, and his website doesn't actually appear to feature a bio or any contact details which I am really surprised at. He must very confident that he is going to be commissioned regardless. I like how big his image preview is, and for editorials he shows each spread rather than a selection.
I find his menu very hard to read and navigate, there are no sections but just a long list of clients. I think the type face is suited to his subject matter and style, (very raw, film shots) but it is too packed and unordered. Also there are no navigation arrows to move between images.
Amber Grace Dixon is an editorial an fashion photographer who has shot for the likes of Wonderland and Vogue. I really like her work and think she's a very talented photographer, but when visiting her website, It just struck me as being very basic. When creating a professional website it is really important to consult a web or graphic designer to help choose a suitable type to represent your name: your brand. The type and colour and placement on her website just seems a bit too simple and doesn't do her work an favours; even changing it to black might help it seem more professional. However, in terms of navigation and for an editorial photographer, her work is set out really cleanly, and the simplistic style here works well. You can view each editorial in its entirety which is what you would want to see with an editorial, and the scrolling to view a next image is easy and convenient.
Jacob Hodgkinson is a published photographer who shoots regularly for Vivienne Westwood, Surface magazine, Commons&Sense, Esquire UK, and Vogue Nippon. His website takes you straight to an overview, showcasing his best work organised by client, and a menu split into Personal Projects, Portraits and About & Contact.
His bio is short but concise and tells you everything you might need to know, and three ways to contact him. Navigation wise, an arrow appears when you hover over an image to let you know that you can click to scroll. I found this way of moving between images very helpful, but if not all images are showcased in a tile format on each page too.
I really like the simplistic style of this website, and the use of white space. The menu is split into About, Portfolio, Blog, and Contact. Within 'Portfolio' it is split down further into Editorial, Commercial and Personal. Rather than have a client list in the menu each thumbnail is labelled with a client name, which is something I really like as it looks more simplified and more spread out. When clicked, each thumbnail opens into a gallery where you can easily click through the images.
The only aspect of this website I wasn't sure about was that the homepage had images of flowers, (first image) something which hasn't come across through the remainder of the site, and seems quite irrelevant, especially to her commercial practice.
Something I didn't like about Lucie Hugary's website was the same feature from Lauren Engel's; the first home page you were brought to you had to click to access the main site. This is time wasting for the visitor to the site, and doesn't give a really quick overview; you decide whether you like the website within the first 5 seconds.
I like the overview aspect of this site, you can see a wide variety of work pretty quickly, and get a good idea of what her work is about. The menu is split into Fashion stories, advertising/celeb/other, and info/contact/social.
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