Your portfolio site’s website design should be free of distractions. You are selling yourself and your art and that is all!
Organization
It’s up to you to decide how to categorize your artwork – by theme or genre, by medium, or by year. The main thing is to stay consistent between categories.
Titles and naming
Give your galleries descriptive titles. Gallery 1, gallery 2, gallery 3, etc., does not tell the user what is in those galleries. Fantasy gallery, Sci-fi gallery, Book Covers, etc. will help guide the visitor to what they are looking for.
Gallery pages
Your gallery pages should also follow the basic website design guidelines as the rest of your site. Use clear, simple navigation to guide your visitors through to your artwork. Use “Next” and “Previous” buttons to allow visitors to step through your images without having to hit the back button on their browsers.
Thumbnails
Create thumbnails for your artwork, and link each thumbnail to the full size image. Make the thumbnails large enough to give a good approximation of the full size image but not so large that they take a long time to download. 100×100 pixels is a reasonable size. Don’t overload your gallery pages with thumbnails. Put no more than 20 thumbnails on a page.
Full size artwork
Link your thumbnails (and image titles, if they are displayed with your thumbnails) to the full size images. Do not simply link to the image file. Create a web page for each image and display its title, a short description, copyright info, and other relevant information. Be careful not to overdo it, the focus should be your artwork.Opening artwork in a new window
Few things are as annoying as having a window pop-up each time you click to view an image. The only thing more annoying is having to close that window each time. The newest generation of browsers come with built-in pop-up blockers, so keep that in mind. If you must use a new window to display your artwork, give the visitor navigation buttons to view next/previous artwork.Image size
Don’t scrimp on the image sizes. Give your visitors something to look at. 600 to 800 pixels wide and 600 to 800 pixels tall should suffice for most images. If you are worried about people ‘borrowing’ your art, slap a watermark with copyright info and your URL on the image in a place where it won’t distract the viewer but can’t be removed without destroying the image. If you want to show more detail, link to separate enlarged portions of the image.File size and format
Your artwork should be saved in .jpg or .png format, whichever yields the lowest file size with best quality for the image. Watch your file sizes, as large images take longer to download and can eat up your bandwidth quickly. Try to keep your images under 100kb. Files with only a few colors and no major gradients can be saved as .gif or .png files of very small size.
Miscellaneous Tips
Broken links and errors
Check your site for broken links and missing pages. Your website’s log file keeps track of missing pages and other errors. Check your logs often, especially when your site is new or when you add new pages. Most web hosting companies give you access to a control panel where you can access your log file and error pages.
Personal information
You should be wary of posting too much personal information on your website. Identity theft is rampant on the Internet. It is best to stick to the basics– your name, email address, and maybe your PO Box address will suffice. If anyone needs your phone number or home address for business purposes, you can provide it to them individually. And make sure you have reliable email.
Resume / Education / Experience
Here’s a simple rule: Never post anything about yourself online that you aren’t comfortable with everyone in the world knowing. It isn’t necessary to list every single job you’ve ever had. List only your art-related positions or experiences. Keep it relevant to whatever type of work you are seeking. If you are looking for work in the gaming industry, tailor your background information to reflect your expertise in that area. As always, keep it short and to the point.
