In part one of this series, I discussed website hosting and domain registration, with the intention of giving newbies a quick rundown of some of their options and the estimated costs.
This second post will be helpful to creators who are looking to design their website (or hire someone to design it). I have tried to make it informative for everyone in general who is looking to build a website, but I have given specific focus to artists and writers who are looking to build their online, professional portfolios.
What do you want out of this online portfolio? What do you want to communicate to your audience?
Before you begin to design or hire a designer, you need to be aware of what it is you want to do with your website, what you want to communicate and a rough idea of what you’re willing to spend. Ask yourself some of these questions:
- What personality/style do you want your site to have? Professional, fun, comical, urban grunge?
- Fast, good, cheap? Pick two. What you pick will determine the quality and cost of your website design (and development, for that matter).
- What do you want to give priority to, the relationships you make with your customers or the products you’re selling?
- Do you want your online portfolio to relate to many of your other online “personalities,” such as on social media websites?
- How frequently do you intend to update your website? If not often, consider a more static website design that will not depend on a content management system.
STOP: Hire a designer if you need one.
One of the biggest mistakes I see people make is trying to do everything themselves. If you haven’t worked with web design before, don’t depend on yourself to create a smashing portfolio, because you aren’t likely to create one without the prior experience and practice. If you want to get into web design, work on it as a side project; don’t try out a lot of mistakes on your portfolio. (This is equivalent to sprinkling glitter on your paper resume!) I see this all too often on visual artists’ websites, where iframes still inappropriately rear their typically ugly heads, flash is overused or misused, text is illegible due to font or color choices, or images are saved at high quality, thus making the site load slowly.
Print designers should also take caution when designing their online portfolios. The world of print is quite different from the world wide web, and I frequently encounter designs that were done by someone who clearly works with paper much more often than with a screen. Designing a made-for-print poster is quite different from designing a website.
Creators need to be very aware that a poorly designed website can communicate a number of negative things to an audience: that you lack skill, that you are “cheap,” that you may be dodgy to work with or buy from, as well as others. If you plan to use your portfolio to try to gain work, you want to design it well. If you haven’t done much web design, you should consider hiring a web designer, rather than depending on yourself. (Shameless plug: I’m available for work, by the way.) The work will go more quickly and smoothly this way, and the finished product will serve you better. Also, please understand that there is no shame in being a visual artist and needing a web designer’s help. A (good) web designer will be skilled in structuring a usable design for the web, screen and in some cases mobile phones; people don’t just pick up these skills overnight.
Where You Can Hire a Web Designer, Estimated Costs, and Dos and Donts
While there are definitely many good, local designers in most cases, I would recommend giving freelancers (from anywhere) a shot. When you “limit” yourself to only local designers and companies, you may be missing out on someone who better fits your needs. Looking online for designers, also gives you the private chance to study their work, rather than having to deal with the in-your-face, hard sale from someone over the phone. At the end of the day, choose according to who has the best portfolio and experience, be they local or from far away. Online communication technologies make it easy to keep in touch, no matter where you and your hired designer are, so there’s no need to worry about that.
In terms of costs, what I said about hosting is also true for web design: you get what you pay for. If you hire a designer at $15USD an hour, your finished product is likely going to look different than if you’d found a designer whose rates were higher. This isn’t to say that there aren’t good, cheap designers out there, but the best will almost always cost more. It is, however, also true that the very best do not always cost an arm and a leg. Try to find a designer that meets your needs and is within your budget, and do remember that if your upfront costs are absurdly cheap, you can almost 100% bet that you will spend many small amounts of money in the future, attempting to correct a poor job.
If you aren’t sure how many hours your design work will require, ask for a free quote. A good web design can take several hours to create. If many pages require significantly different design elements or structures, expect to pay more for them as well, because they too take time. The cost of a good web design is variable and related to your requirements. This is why it is so important that you go into a job posting, having a strong idea of what you want.
So where can you find web designers? Try posting your job requirements on sites like Freelance Switch, Elance, oDesk, Get a Freelancer or Authentic Jobs ($75+ job posting fee).
Once you’ve found a web designer, openly and frequently communicate with him or her. I also recommend you keep written correspondence (e.g., email, instant messaging), rather than simply use your phone, in case there is ever any confusion or a disagreement. The former is more likely than the latter.
Unless you have previously worked a lot in web design, trust your web designer to know what is generally best for your layout, even if you’re a graphic artist yourself. As a web designer, it pains me greatly when a client demands a certain visual feature that I know will only cause his users eye-strain, confusion and/or other problems. However, “the customer is always right,” and so if a client wants something after I’ve given them sound reasons to do otherwise, I’ll do as they want. Most web designers you hire will be no different.
To my literary friends and those who are very new to the Internet: I’m aware that for some of you the realm of visual art and web design may indeed by very foreign. If this is the case, please keep one key thing in mind. Don’t ask for spec work. (What is spec work, and why is it bad?)
If you’re designing your portfolio yourself, remember it’s not all about looks. It’s about usability, too.
A common mistake that visual artists make is showing too much of their artwork in their design. This may indeed make for a beautiful website, in the sense that the artwork itself is beautiful, but it doesn’t mean it is useful or usable for the person browsing your portfolio. If you’re trying to sell your work or skills through your portfolio website, you want to aim for connecting your audience with that pertinent information as easily as possible. Overwhelming visuals can be distracting, confusing or even off-putting.
The old KISS principle (Keep it simple, stupid.) is a good one. Make the elements of your website legible and easily accessible. One of the most important aspects of a website is how easy its navigation is to use. Also make sure that your navigation degrades well when the page’s stylesheet is turned off.
Links to Help You Design a Website
If you plan to go it alone when it comes to your portfolio design, consider checking out the following websites for tutorials, inspiration and usability information.
- David Airey’s website: the web development category
- Nettuts+
- Smashing Magazine: the how-to and CSS sections
- Veerle’s blog
- For inspiration: CSS Import, Unmatched Style and CSS Zen Garden
Summary
Building something yourself can be very rewarding, but when it comes to your online portfolio, you need to do what’s best for it and your work. Perhaps that means building it yourself, and perhaps it doesn’t. Keep it elegantly simple, usable and accessible. I hope this post has helped you make some sound decisions.
Part three of this series will concern choosing a publishing tool.
This blog entry is under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial No Derivatives license. For more information about the terms of reusing this entry, see here.
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Tagged under: web-design, series-building-a-portfolio
1 Comment
Andrew Eastgate on Jul. 07, 2009 at 02:58pm
All really good advice. Expanding on the part about trusting your web designer, you definitely need to do this. I (as a web developer who deals with designs) have seen websites made according to a certain design, and then the client comes along and asks for some parts to be removed or changed, without any regard to how it will affect the way other parts of the page look. Don’t do this! It’s better not to take on the role of web designer when you’re hiring one. Give them an overall explanation of what you want, and let them work out how to do it!
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