My professional website is up and running, linked on all my social media platforms, it is basically an online collection of my favourite work, a more extensive version of what will be in my professional Portfolio.
How I made my wesbite;
A good website should be simple, elegent, clutter free and show simply the answer to these questions;
- Who is this person?
- Where are they based?
- What work have they done before?
- Examples of recent work?
- How much do they charge? (Dayrate)
- How do I contact this person?
It should also be easy to navigate with a simple introduction saying who you are, what you do(shory and sweet). The work displayed should be categorised and clearly labelled, showing a varied and carefully selected varitey of work.
The work shown should be alongside context for the work, with a client brief/process/description/relevent links to articles or websites.
It should include an about me Page, with a compelling biography, that should sell yourself and your work, by showing your skills, work and experience all of which should be simple and conversational yet factual.
The about me will be written as if talking to a stranger, saying who you are, where you do it, why you do it and how you do it, all of which you should say by being humble yet confident in you ability. The most important thing for your wesbite though is to make it as easy as possible for potential employees and people looking for an illustrator to contact you, this is most easily achieved by having a contact me page, on which you should put links to all your social media, a phone/email address if you so wish to share this, and a contact form.
When designing my website it took me a while to think of catagories that would best summarise my work, I went with types of editorial work;
- HOME- Which is just my favourite work, with my name and menu catagories under.
- PROMOTIONAL- Which includes my favourite select promotion based work, i.e. things I’ve made to promote a subject, the images I chose were from a charity project, and a post I made to promote a shadow puppet performance. These show my techiqual painting skills, and my paper-cut, collaborative skills.
- EDITORIAL- Of which includes my favourite select editorial based work. The images I chose were four images from my Illustra-TED project from second year, two images from my War Horse Project, and a GIF I made to go with a news article, also from second year. these show my techniqual artistic skills, especially my use of ink, water colour, plus my ability to make a GIF.
- NARRATIVE- Of which includes my favourite select narrative based work. The images I chose were three collage based pieces, two from my Biographies project, which using collage and paper cut, and one from the 28 Days of Something project, which is a purely collage based piece. These show my ability to use the adobe suite, and my paper cut and collage skills.
- RECENT- Which gives a little summary of what my most recent work entails, plus a tease image of what the work will be based around.
- ABOUT- Which includes a little summary of my creative life and work, plus where I’m based, and my rates. I have also listed my key skills on this page.
- CONTACT- This has links to all my social media, an email address they can contact me on, plus a form that can be filled in to contact me directly and quickly, using my website.
Above shows screen shots of each of the pages on my website, for a closer inspection, please feel free to have a look on my wesbite;
Becky Watts 