Todd SumamnoThe constantly shifting field of website design can offer a wealth of creative ideas both to the screen and to the mind. Today’s world of illustrative conceptual image capture allows a far greater degree of visual styles and graphical content. The latest methods employed both by individuals and groups can help to bring about a core creative message or personal gallery.
Central to the most appealing and ground-breaking sites should be a fluid approach to colour, form and typeface. The usability is of course central to a success in a business context, but to those of us more concerned with the artistic integrity of a website’s performance there are other far more exciting areas to explore!
Sites by artists for artists
The true purpose of a designer’s personal website is to act as a gateway to their own artistic landscape. Serving as a virtual calling card, an online gallery is an essential showcase for an individual’s potential design output and application. This is just as true for artists as it is for web designers, and the variety of different tools and applications currently serving individuals is truly vast. Blog templates and website builders such as WordPress, tumblr, weebly and 1and1 can all provide a full range of themes and templates for artistically minded individuals to highlight their latest ideas.
Take the example of the artist and web journalist Steve Lambert, whose website visitsteve.com highlight’s WordPress’s suitability for all kinds of creatives looking for a reliable form of content to show off their work. Another great example of this creative output and integrity can be found over at coencast.tumblr.com, a beautifully rendered collection of images inspired by the characters of the films of the Coen Brothers. As a piece of beautifully optimised left field creativity, it is part of the explosion of design minded artistry currently making inroads into the collective consciousness.
Artists who are known for their uncompromising dedication to underground styles and non-conformist imaging are also well served by today’s rise in web powered creativity. The site showcasing the work of the mysterious visual art terrorist Banksy is a case in point. Largely allowing the images to do the talking, the site captures a piece of the ambiguity and raw intensity surrounding the artist. It does exactly what a well designed artist’s site should do – inform, entertain and more than anything else, intrigue.
Photography and image design can also be practically applied through WordPress. Once seen as simply a tool for text based entries, the site can now present artists and video diarists with a more visual approach to life. A good example of this is the well composed blog girlwithacamera.co.uk which concentrates on the composition and placement of images and their various effects on their viewer. Taking in a full influence from the range of style and image formation, the site can offer some solid inspiration to all image addicts.
A dedication to creative form on the web
Linked to this new potential for creative artists is the ongoing search for organisations and businesses to appeal to a more stylistically cultivated and web-smart audience. A design agency in particular should ideally aim to benefit from a visually captivating home page. This is certainly the case with www.webalys.com, which takes an instantly stimulating screen shot to show off the kind of hi-tech illustrative approach they can provide for their clients.
Taking this as evidence for a new form of visual language – one which takes into account the necessity for producing an immediate result of capturing an audience’s attention, while also intriguing them enough to progress further – these examples of web powered visual luminosity can offer a good deal of inspiration for web creators, developers and artistically minded souls. Further illustration of these sophisticated ideals and creative productivity can be found over at thedesigninspiration.com.
Brittany Maslo