HaNNaH West
Simple Effective Websites...with Style
2/5/10: Just launched the redesign of www.rokanimart.com, the website of RokAnimart Studio Gallery. Please visit to see the past work and present offerings of French artist Daniele Proner, San Francisco, California, displayed in her numerous galleries. What a pleasure to work with this lovely lady and the gorgeous images of her spectacular art!
1/21/09: I recently launched a new website, the Southern Oregon Artists Resource. A labor of love for the talented community of artists here in Southern Oregon, it's still in its infancy - a work in progress with many planned features still to arrive on the scene, but loaded with potential and rapidly gaining local support! If you don't have a website yet and having one designed is beyond you right now, please consider a listing at SOAR - it's only 25.00 for a year. If you already have a website, you know that any means of directing visitors to your online gallery is important, and good search engine rankings are priceless - SOAR is designed to assist your business on both fronts. Please visit the Resource, have a look around to get an idea of where we're headed, and join our ARTISTS FIRST mailing list to be notified when new features are added. This is a great time to ask questions and make suggestions - it's all about you!
Are you a facebook member? Become a fan of SOAR's facebook page, learn more and join the discussion!
Promote Your Page Too
It's essential to have a website that promotes you and your work, provides a hub of communication between you and your clients, and gives visitors from outside your established sphere of influence an opportunity to purchase your products and services. Let's establish your online presence now so you can plug in to this increasingly dominant form of promotion and commerce. One client, an artist with an established local business selling prints and teaching classes, made sales directly from her new website before the sun set on the DAY HER WEBSITE LAUNCHED! Another client received a sizable commission for an original work of art through her site within a week of its launch. Within the first year, this client was also contacted by a writer who had chosen her from among thousands of glass art websites, asking if she would like her work included in a book covering 100 artists in her field. The book will soon be available, less than two years from her website's launch! While I can't guarantee these fantastic results for everyone, I certainly will give your site the same care and attention to detail that made theirs so effective.
Personal and Professional
Though they wanted an online presence, more than one client waited several years before having their websites built. Why? Their inquiries were answered gruffly, leaving the impression that these "professionals" were too busy to answer questions from a prospective client. I believe in service. I want to create a website that's uniquely "you", one which portrays your art, special talents and the products and services you offer in a manner that's appealing to your visitors and produces results for your business. I work closely with my clients to produce from code the designs they envision and functionality that suits the needs of their endeavors. Don't worry if you know next to nothing about computers or websites! I've been there and understand completely; I've learned how to do this so you don't have to. I'll help you to get started and to organize your thoughts and resources so the process of building your site is as painless as possible. We'll be in close contact as we design and build; you can review your pages as they progress and make adjustments as we go.
For Artists by an Artist
It really began in the mid-80's with commissioned portraits of show horses in charcoal and oil pastel, along with some photography and mural painting. I worked very hard to portray these magnificent animals accurately and with an appreciative eye, and discovered a talent for portraying their individual personalities, that "special something" their owners loved most about them. Those realistic charcoal drawings led to paintings in pastel, acrylics and mixed media in the 90's, my first forays into the digital medium in the late 90's and experiments with computer animation in 2000-2001. About that time I started making jewelry, which kept me very busy right up til other artists began to approach me to design their websites.
Building websites has taken what I learned from my early work in business administration and management and my artistic endeavors over the years, focused it into a cohesive whole and put it all to work in one new artistic medium. Now I have the pleasure of appreciating the work of others as I work to promote the growth of their business- something I know can be especially challenging for artists. The advent of css styling has made designing websites artistically satisfying, and with each new project I stretch my creative skills as far as possible while staying within your budget.
Website Maintenance and Updates
Once you launch your completed website and begin emailing friends and business contacts to announce it, making changes could be the last thing on your mind. But as time goes on you may want to update your site. Styling with css techniques makes most design updates very cost-effective, and in some cases makes things possible that once were only in our dreams!