Web Design Tips for Fine Art Websites

Last week we listed several key items to consider when buying or designing a fine art website. The items were as follows:

• Design
• Layout
• Programming
• Hosting
• Domain Names
• Search Engine Optimization
• E-commerce
• Content Management Systems

We primarily focused on the importance of Content Management Systems because of the number of updates an artist website undergoes on a regular basis. If you're an active artist, you should continuously be updating your website with new artwork, shows, news, events, ect. In this post we will be focusing on the design and layout of a fine art website.

When browsing the web through artist websites, gallery websites, and fine art websites, it seems that websites tend to fall under 4 conditions.

1. Great Web Design and Bad Programming.
2. Great Web Programming and Bad Web Design.
3. Bad Web Design and Bad Web Programming.
4. Or on rare occasions: Great Web Design and Great Web Programming.

Obviously #4 is the best option. We'll cover programming in another post.

Fine Art World Edward Aldrich Website

Great design consists of several criteria including:

• Layout
• Color
• Font Usage
• Navigation
• Background Images
• Ease of Use
• Aesthetics

 A fine art website with great design should be eye-catching, engaging, easy-to-navigation, professional, well branded, and should accentuate the artwork. Two major issues in web design are distraction and bad navigation. The design should not distract from the all important artwork and should be easy-to-browse.

Fine Art World websites are designed with these concepts in mind. The community websites and independent websites are easy to navigate and make artwork shine.

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