Portfolio: design, identity and photo solution for Arlette Laan
I took on a smaller budget project for a friend and fellow artist, Arlette Laan, who makes really fun dolls and takes wonderful photos. She was looking to update her older site but wanted to retain the orange and blue color combinations that appear to have a strong connection to her Dutch roots. I have found over the years that European color schemes often employ these traditional color combinations. What often happens is that these heavy competing colors will be toned down by the use of a lighter screened color like a light blue. I used this, and a very light Futura font to create her new “identity”, and the old color scheme now frames here entire site. I simplified her menu system on the home page to guide visitors towards her three main offerings. Other links like “about” and “contact” were subordinated on the home page. On the sub pages, all the links were put into a CSS-pure tab menu near the top, and simple links near the bottom of the page.
One of the other things Arlette was looking for was a way to simplify updating the photos on her site. She is always taking new photos, be it landscapes, flowers or even product photos of her dolls. For someone who doesn’t know much HTML or coding, this can be a very time consuming and daunting task. In fact, it can take a lot of time even if you do know HTML, as you always have to deal image sources, links, thumbnails, and what to do about the page which displays the full size photo (do you just open it in a generic browser window or….?).
The solution was to come up with a system that employed an easy to use administrative interface. I found a Flash/XML solution that allowed me to specify sets from Flickr as dynamic content. This made it as easy as uploading a photo into a predefined set at Flickr which already has a great administrative interface. Her photos would now appear immediately.
I feel good about this project as I didn’t allow the small budget to get in the way of good design and simple solutions.
