Designer: Sam Berkes

Artist and printmaker Leigh Leighton-Wallace is experiencing growing pains. As her audience and her traffic online have grown, she has learned her site isn’t performing as it should. She explains, “While the site design is simple—a must for my visitors who are mostly computer novices—the site presents differently on different computers. It generally has the look of an amateur.”

Leighton-Wallace says her site gives clients access to her portfolio and the work they bought, and that any redesign should have a stronger presentation. Ease of navigation is vital. She’s considering purchasing Dreamweaver so she’ll be able to update the site herself.

DG art director Sam Berkes kept his redesign of the site simple, placing focus on Leighton-Wallace’s portfolio of prints. Berkes kept the basic thumbnail format of the original site, but added more thumbnails to each page so a viewer won’t have to reload pages to view the images. To view greater detail, Berkes has a larger image appear to the right as the visitor scrolls over an image.

“The artist was concerned about images being stolen from the site if the viewing area became too large,” says Berkes. “I think at this size she should be safe from pirating, but a watermark can be added to the images for posting online as well.”

Berkes also added a navigation bar to the top of each page. The original design lacks any way to jump pages without using the back button. The links for the home page also load to two separate URLs: www.leighleightonwallace.com and www.leighleightonwallace.com/index.html, which is unnecessary.

The color palette for the site is based on the artist’s work. An earthy palette of tan and gray is used throughout the redesign. The font Velvet is used for the new logo. Text and navigation buttons use the common system font Verdana.

1. Original site
Leigh Leighton-Wallace is an artist and printmaker in Missouri. She wanted to coordinate her site to give clients better access to her portfolio of work.

2. Redesign
DG art director Sam Berkes decided to stay simple with this redesign. There isn’t a whole lot to the site, so organization is pretty straightforward: Showcase the artwork and make the navigation easier for the viewer.

3. Fonts
Berkes chose display font Velvet from www.dafont.com to use for the main headings and title page copy. The standard web-safe sans serif Verdana was used for additional copy and navigation buttons.

4. Colors
In keeping with the organic feel of the artist’s work, Berkes stuck with a natural, earthy color palette.

5. Navigation
Navigation in the original site is nonexistent. “Going from one page to the next, the navigation disappears, forcing the viewer to either hit the back button or get back to the home page to see what else is available,” Berkes says. Keeping a simple navigation bar visible on every page allows for less hassle. This way, you don’t get five clicks into the site and realize you have to backtrack to get to the next page.

6. Viewing artwork
Berkes suggests a different viewing method for artwork on the site. As it is now, only a small image of each piece is available on cramped pages. Berkes put smaller thumbnails of all the works on each page so the viewer can get a better taste for what is available. Rolling over the thumbnails removes the artist description on the right and displays a larger version with individual art information underneath.