Completely overhauled my art portfolio website!

May 12, 2015 6:25 AM

Completely overhauled my art portfolio website!
My art portfolio website is now using squarespace software and it's finally mobile friendly! I also changed the overall look, added tons of title/dimension/date information, and edited the navigation bar down for a more minimal and clean atmosphere.

Please let me know if you have any problems or advice about ways to improve the site! Also, I do have the option to make a cover page and I'm ambivalent; I think those can feel like unnecessary barrier clicks but I also don't love that the homepage co-opts the entire acrylics gallery into itself.

Role: Artist

posted by vegartanipla (5 comments total)

I think this looks great. I hear you on the homepage being the acrylics gallery, but I don't think you want a cover page either. Maybe just make sure the homepage is whatever you think your best/most recent/most representative work is? (And the acrylics page could easily be that, but obviously you're more familiar with your work.)
posted by veggieboy at 10:47 AM on May 12, 2015

Thanks for checking it out!

Of all the galleries, the acrylics one has the most recent work and it also loads the fastest due to its smaller size so I'm okay with it being the first impression. I just don't love that the current setup makes it so the Acrylics page data hijacks link descriptions to my overall site (facebook wants to call my site "Acrylics" and describe it with that page's description instead of the overall site one). Plus I worry that it's maybe not immediately clear to visitors that they start out already in the acrylics gallery and they may therefore confusedly/frustratedly try to navigate to it depsite already being on it.
posted by vegartanipla at 3:00 PM on May 12, 2015

Ah. Well in my non-expert opinion, I think the navigation is clear. Plenty of sites work like that. The different color in the navigation for the current page is probably all that's needed.

That's weird about Facebook, though... In Squarespace, under Settings, do you have SEO information filled out? (Particularly search engine description?) There are other behind-the-scenes places to describe your site/pages, but at least with the Squarespace template I'm using, that's where Facebook seems to look for the site description.
posted by veggieboy at 4:24 AM on May 13, 2015

Glad the navigation is clear to you! Yup, I have the SEO info there. Did you fill out individual page titles and descriptions? I bet if you didn't that Facebook is willing to use the SEO info but apparently prefers the page info if it has the option.
posted by vegartanipla at 8:04 PM on May 15, 2015

Just a small fix: What about making the navigation titles/font size a bit bigger?
posted by marelac at 6:13 AM on May 24, 2015