Suzanne Bohay - Web Designer Analyst

www.artbo.net / www.artbo.ca

An ongoing endeavour, the artbo site was designed to consolidate in one place, the growing number of artist sites I am developing. **

Each website is it's own unique project. In the end tying in to Artbo. The Artbo websites offers comprehensive sites that represent artists as well as their works of art. As time, distance and cost often hinder an artist's ability to present their work to different galleries, online portfolios offer the opportunity to reach a wider audience. The emphasis is placed on presenting the artists work, the web site is designed to complement the art and not overpower it.

The Artbo website leads into each artist site. Information on this sites can be seen by clicking on the Artist Sites in the menu at left.

Each artist has an introduction page in Artbo that links to their own personal site.

General information for artists and art lovers is found throughout the site

**The website is in the process of being upgraded to current web standards

www.artour.ca

The first Prescott Russell art and studio tour was launched to great success in 2007. Even with brochure and location information many of those touring, preferred to print out the location maps for each artist they wanted to visit from the website attesting to the growing usefullness of the web to support print information.

Artist page includes a brief description of the artists work, samples, and location information. Link to sponsor and own website if available.

Location maps: For interested art patrons who wish to visit all artists in a certain area, the rollover maps created with Photoshop and Image ready, allows them to see what art is available in which area.

www.rothwellgallery.com

The Rothwell Hauck Gallery website was originally taken on for maintenance only.. I slowly began to modify the structure of the site to to simplify updating of content. A new gallery direction gave us the opportunity to add new design features and bring the site up to W3C standards. A: new Flash advertising block was added, more intuitive menus, and direct links to each gallery artist profile.

The new artists gallery gives the customer a better view at a glance of each artist. Each image is clickable to a larger version. It was decided to go with a brighter header to give the section a more artistic flair but stay within the same colour palette.

www.ottawaartfestival.com

The Ottawa Fine Art Festival wanted a new site within a limited budget. This simple html site was developed to give the festival a simpler look and let the art take center stage. The backend was also simplified to allow easy updating of content. Artwork for the front page are selected to match the design of the site from the list of participating artists. Each year, a new selection will appear.

The layout of the header allows for a main menu and submenu to appear always in the same place. A second menu appears at the bottom of the page as some information pages can become quite long.

www.alanaudreybain.artbo.net

The most recent artbo artist's site , if offered a challenge in creating a website to represent two artists, who although partnered in life, have their own styles in art. Since they are outdoor painters and spend all their vacation time camping throughout Canada, the green was used to give an earthy feel. Photographs from their travels appear in the background subdued enough to not interfere with the content.

Originally, the website boasted a dual menu, doubled links leading to each artist's page. However during client meetings it became cleear that the two sites must be standalone. A link to each other's site appears in the bottom of the screen, but each site works completly on it's own. To keep the cost of this site close to that of a single artist website, the colour palette and text styles were kept consistent across both sites. However, some differences in content resulted in it being easier to have a seperate stylesheet for each artist.

The galleries for each artist's site is left aligned to keep more control over the image layers. It is quicker for the viewer to load the painting in the same window. It also avoids problems with pop ups.

www.deborah.artbo.net

The colours for this website were inspired by the artist's work. The bold use of colour and subjects in her paintings needed an equally strong site to support them.

Frames was used for this website as another method of posting paintings without resorting to pop up windows. It works well but the result is many pages. The images on the left are also kept at a minimum to avoid any scroll bars appearing.

www.shernya.artbo.net

This artist with a flowing style and striking portraits that seem to appear from the ether, required a more subtle approach in the web palette. A selection paintings appears at the top of the screen to keep the purpose of the site apparent, a vehicle for promoting artwork.

The light green background complemented the painting selection. For the content frame, a white background is used to let the colours of the paintings speak for themselves.

www.duludebohay.artbo.net

The first website I developed has undergone many revisions over the years and is due for one again! As this dynamic artist style is evolving, the website must evolve to properly reflect this new exciting direction.

Using frames allows the menu to stay in the same position on each page. The menu is kept short to avoid the need for a scrollbar that would interfere with the design.

This is the first Artbo site that is completely bilingual. Each page links to it's coinciding page from the link in the top menu. The gallery opens a new window to the view the art, therefore, the gallery pieces are created a little larger so it is easier for the user to see which image they want to see larger.

Web sites in production

The websites described here are currently online. Three of the artist sites are in the process of redesign with a new site coming online soon. Click on the links for a description of each site design.



Artbo ARTour Rothwell Gallery Ottawa Fine Art Festival Artist Sites Alan & Audrey Bain Deborah Czernecky Shernya Vininski-Krause Pierrette Dulude-Bohay Renate Hulley