14 The Illustrator’s Website
Dr. Jessica Boehman
Tips for a Successful Artist Website
- Take the time to determine the look of your website. The pages should all follow the same theme and should read clearly and consistently. Use good photos of your art as landing pages and group your work in appropriate groups: children’s, middle grade, adult; color, black and white; characters, children, and animals, and so on.
- A good way to get started is to look at illustrator websites that you consider exciting, creative, or particularly wonderful. It’s a great way to get inspiration: how can you take some of their concepts and make them work for your work?
- Your work should be cohesive in style. If you have very different styles, you should group work in different sections on your site, or consider making a second site. For instance, if you do comics and realistic portraiture for which you are looking for work, it might be best to have two different sites to direct your viewers accordingly. It’s ok to link from one to the other.
- You must have good quality scans or photos of your work. Make sure the color is correct, it is cleaned, cropped, and represents your work well. Your website is your representative when you cannot be there, so make sure it is showing your work at its best.
- If you like to reach out to your visitors, or you sell your art, consider having an email newsletter with an email opt-in form. This helps you have repeat viewers and customers.
- If you have written content, make sure it is properly written. Be sure to check grammar and spelling before publishing.
- Have a human presence on your site! An About Me page lets viewers know you are a real person. Tell a little about yourself and show a good headshot. Don’t give away personal information, like your address.
- If you are submitting to agents, consider having scanned versions of storyboards, sample artworks, and a dummy in a password-protected section. This keeps it safe from prying eyes, protects unpublished work, but allows agents to access the page with the password you have provided them.
- Keep your website easy to navigate and well-organized.
- Choose an easy-to-read font.
- Stay away from flashing images which may be triggering for photosensitive viewers.
- Make it accessible. Think about the contrast of text on the page. Label images with alt-text for e-Readers. Make sure videos have captions. Make sure you use headers on pages with text. Make your links descriptive and not just a hyperlinked url. Here are tips for making your site accessible to all users.
- Have a clearly-labeled “Contact the Artist” page. This is better than having your email on your website, which could open you to extra spam.
Good illustrator websites for reference
See below for some excellent sites.
Key Takeaways
- A clear, consistent artist’s website is a wonderful marketing tool that stands in for you.
- Be thoughtful about presentation of information and images.
- Remember, this is your professional, outward-facing website, so treat it as such.
