producing a website has been a bumpy road, there is finding an initial design idea, tidying it to make it neat, realising you don't like what you have produced and then stating again. I have been in a constant cycle like this throughout this process, trying to find how I want my website, what photographs I want where, and overall, trying to find my way how to create my site. I have started looking towards other artists websites for inspiration, I need to gather some more ideas on colour and style/ layout as I can't decide what looks good and what looks messy. I started by looking at Irving Penn, I decided on his website as I have done previous research on his work for my current project that I am working on. although I found the website quite easy to navigate, I also found that it was a slight bit of a mess...
overall, first impressions of the website, it was quite simple to navigate, simple menu to select where you wanted to go and what you wanted to see, however, the home page was a lot to take in at once. the home page is the first thing people will see when you go onto their website, it should be simple, limited on text and just give the viewer a clear idea of what they are about to see on the website, the first thing I saw when I went onto this website was a couple photographs and paragraphs of text, although it wasn't too overpowering, it was still a lot to look at on the first page; plus it didn't give me too much of an idea of what I was going to find on this website. the good parts of this website however was the menu, it was at the top of the page and very simple to navigate, if you wanted to find something it would be easy to find on there; this is also very important on a website as people don't want to be searching a website for ages trying to find something specific, a simple menu will be perfect for mine and other peoples website, and I dint what to make it too complicated when it is the first website I am producing.
another thing that I noticed about this website was the lack of colour, as an artists page I expected it to look a little more colourful and lively, however, it was mainly white and grey. this came as a surprise but looking deeper into his work online, I thought that this was a good choice to make as too much colour would distract the audience from his work. I currently have a light blue background on my website, this should be changed as when I look through my work, I do notice that the blue can be quite distracting from the photographs, a white or light grey would work better for an art style website.
Finally, there is the content that is on the website, I can clearly see that Penn has a lot of work, a busy career and had many exhibitions, but I feel like that there is too much on the website to look at. although this would bee good if someone was to be doing deep research on him, I think that it is a little too much and it puts me off looking deeper into the website. I have limited amount of work on my website, about 4 links in my menu and think that it is easy to navigate and not overpowering at all, I don't think that putting too much work/ info ion a website is a good idea as it can be distracting and maybe off putting.
overall, I do think that Irving Penn does have a great website with a lot of content, I have learnt that the use of colour can effect the way people see your work and that it can be distracting and the menu should be used to make navigation on the website easy. I have also learnt that too much text can be off putting and make people not interested. I will take all of these variables and put them towards creating my own website, to make it the best quality I can, easy navigation and helpful for my viewers that visit.
Screenshot from Irvin Penn's Website
visit the Irving Penn website here: https://irvingpenn.org/
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