Allison's ARTC2010 Blog - What Makes A Good Artist Portfolio?

What Makes A Good Artist Portfolio?
Posted on April 12th, 2010 at 8:52 am by ahrosh and

I chose to critique Ken Wong’s artist portfolio: http://www.kenart.net/

The strong aspects of his portfolio are the color, font color, font size, navigation, and artwork. This portfolio’s color is neutral with his artwork fading into the background, at the top. It is gray, gray-green, and dark gray which instantly draws your eye to the his artwork that is being showcased. This is a reason his art is the first thing noticed, his background is not taking away from the beauty and color in his art

Another part that makes this portfolio and good one is his choice in font color and size. He chose two different fonts and that is it for his whole website. Also, that fact they are only subtly different helps a great deal to not draw attention to the difference. He makes the font legible but not center of his website, it is at the very top and just noticeable. The font colors he chose to use are perfect for the color of his background. He made all the font white and every link to something (except the top links to other pages) yellow, which makes them stand out. This also makes the viewer want to click them because they are bold and they know it will lead them to another page.

Another good thing about this website is that it is very easy to navigate. He has set everything out at the top right corner, making the viewer able to find what they are looking for. Also, once in those pages he clearly shows where to click with the boldness of the yellow font, which either will lead you to a new page or open over top the one open. Also, by clicking his name at the top left corner will bring you instantly back to the homepage, which clever and easy!

The last thing that makes this online portfolio good is the way he placed his artwork on the site. It is the first thing the viewer notices, which is the most important aspect of the whole website. Also, he does not place ALL of his artwork on that page, which makes the viewer have to go away from the main page to see more, clever in my opinion! There are also parts that make it not as strong.

The things that make this portfolio weaker is that there is an updates right on the side and the set up at the top to navigate seems flipped. This is not a lot, which is good because I feel this is a really nice portfolio online compared to some!

The thing about having updates right on the side of the front page is convenient, yes, but not really appealing. It distracts the viewer at first to look at that. It is great to put updates but maybe he could have placed them in a a separate page or link.

The last thing that is not the greatest would have to be how he put gallery, prints, projects, and then about. This feels backwards, wouldn’t you want people to read about you first, maybe he could have switched the updates to bio? It just makes this portfolio and bit weak, it is not a huge deal, it just is sort of different. Overall this is a really good portfolio with many aspects that make it good!

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