WebsiteSupporting Document

Sophie Gilbert

From every page you can return to the home page through the top left corner button ‘Nigel Shafran’. This allows the viewer to view each project separately. The background has an oddly familiar feel to it, with the slight off white and childhood textbook pattern.

His work is listen from most recent first, without an ‘about me’ page. As a general rule I find about me pages unprofessional for a commission based professional photographer. Must consider this for my own website. Perhaps use a blurb page to give a short description of my concept rather than about me.

Visual research

Shafran’s websites has been one of my favourites for some time. The features that draw me too it are:- The left hand side navigation bar- Simplicity- limited text and colours, the images stand out by themselves- Structured lines to give continuity throughout - I like his work

Tim Barber

Again I am drawn to another photographer’s websites because of the simplicity and lack of text. Both websites feature the left hand side navigation and dark grey rather than black text. The base of the websites is muted to let the work speak for itself, keeping colour and text to a minimal to enhance the imagery- Website is used like an online gallery space.

Pro’s:Fast to loadEasy to useFew Headings to choosefrom which scroll down when cho-sen and away again once the left. Work is listen most recent first.There is a definite style/brand to his name

Cons:Slideshow of images! HATE!Not enough time to view, however is does keep you instanced because there is never quit enough time to view each image.

Personally I found Wordpress very difficult to use and therefore began searching fora different site to build from. I chose to use WIX in the end because of the simplicity of it. Its features still included embeddable audio, video and images.

Rough Designs

I have chosen to make my website about my practice to date, not only this project. Using the pivotal moments from the ongoing project of the past 3 years. I’ve featured projects exhibiting a broad skill base, from video and audio to photography and the theory behind them.Each project has been lead by the critical theory I have been studying at the time, and therefore the accompanying artist statements have a brief outlining of the concept from which they came.As this is the first design on the website, I plan to develop it over the final major project to incorporate different ways of viewing the work.I toyed with the idea of having audio for each page that would start automatically but from further research, I decided against it. As a viewer of any artist website, I do not like things with an automatic system, whether it be the sim-ple slide showing of images (which I hate!) too audio start-ing. I found that in the case of automatic audio, it could be quit startling if you where, to say, have speakers set to quit a high volume without realising or headphones on; going against the current thread of consciousness of design in action which is to create the sense/feeling of home, as it is meant to be a place where one feels safe and at ease.

The Navigation Bar:

As I regularly lean towards photography and moving image as my chosen medium, I’ve gone for a black background to frame the images and make them stand out. I originally wanted the left hand side navigation as it is a natural process to read left to right, how-ever, for the home page, I decided to go with a top bar navigation to follow the lines of the cover photo. I have used one of the most poignant images from the series ‘presence through absence’ of my family home page with the design that no matter where you go through the website, you can always get back ‘home’.

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To create a drop down menu bar using WIX: Pages/ Add Pages/ Name your page/

To link pages: Pages/ Settings/ Page address

Content

The decision process for content took into consideration that this was a professional opportunity to show my work to a wider audience. I therefore tried to include a range of work showing different skills from the best, to most recent projects. Although most artist websites list their work from most recent to past work, I have consciously listed mine in the order they were made in as the projects have been an on going process over many briefs. Presence through absence is the initial photo book that sporned the concept area that I have been working with i.e family, memory, loss, and therefore an essential piece to set the tone of the website. The image featured on the home page has been taken from this pro-ject because of the connotations ‘home page’ implies. Throughout the whole website you can return ‘home’ via the navigation bar at the top.

Used: embeded ISSUU document

For the acompanying statement I kept the tone of it informal to give a feeling of familiarity. The instructions are there to help envelope the listener fully into the soundscapes and give maximum sound quality and detail for recall.

The sound archives are from different projects but all working on the same principle of being tools for memory recall.

They contain interviews from design in action (dog on the sofa), edited together sound scapes (who am i?, Naan bread pitta bread)and the reactions of looking through a family album.