A couple of years ago I gave a talk at a Meetup for coders and artists. During the day I work as a software engineer, while I work on my art in my free time, so I was excited to speak at an event that involved the merging of my two interests.
Over the years, as I’ve learned more about technology and marketing, I’ve made adjustments to my artist website. Take a look at my talk to learn more:
I studied painting and creative writing when I was in college. As an art major, I had a project to make a portfolio website for my artwork. And that’s how I got started with web development – I taught myself HTML, CSS, and JavaScript so I could have a functioning portfolio site.
The first version of my portfolio site looked pretty terrible, but I was so proud that I figured out how to make it all on my own. I also liked how building the website was an art of its own. Above you can see that I made the header and navigational links collaged images. I later learned that using images for navigation isn’t very user-friendly, so I converted the navigation to text.
Aside from teaching myself to code, and continuing to read articles on the subject, I also started taking classes in graphic design. I was hungry to make my website better, but I also wanted to make it look better too. I ended up creating a logo for my site, which you can see above. I suppose I was pretty proud that I designed the logo all on my own, that initially it was rather large in the header.
For the next version of my site, I realized I needed to shrink the logo down more, and I started featuring more images of my work on the homepage. Once I had a better handle on the basic look and feel, I started building it out more.
In 2010, I put together an educational section with online lesson plans, since I noticed that students and teachers were contacting me every year with questions about my work. I wanted to make it easier for others to learn about my process and technique.
I continued to play around with the overall look and feel, as well as making improvements to the user experience, like making the website responsive.
Earlier this year, I worked on redesigning my site once more. I even added an online store for purchasing my work directly from the site, to make things easier for users. I also redesigned the logo so it wouldn’t emphasize my collage work as much, which would open my work up to other mediums.
My site has come a long way. I’m proud that I’ve taught myself a number of things while going through the process of building it – such as learning about coding, web design, user experience design, and content creation. I’m so thankful that it’s easy to share artwork online – and by having a web presence, I’m able to reach people I never thought I’d be able to reach before.