Critique Artist's Portfolio Site

[artistcharle]

I recently hired a student to create a site where people can browse/ buy my original artwork. How well did he do?

www.artistcharlessmith.com

[ElectricInkPen]

The flash on the frontpage is slow to load on a dialup connection...no real surprise, but annoying. The same aesthetic effect could have been created with static images, and probably would have saved a lot of time, and on your part, money. Once inside, the layout is good...things stay consistent, load at a reasonable rate, and nothing seems to be broken. The photography looks a little bit too dark, and probably could have been cleaned up and brightened in either Photoshop or its free alternative, the GIMP without too much hassle. This might be a point of contention with you, if your work involves vivid colors. As is, your paintings seem very shaded, and I am not positive that this is the effect you wish.

[mjp]

I agree with the previous comments re: flash and general darkness of the images. I thought the darkness could be my monitor, so I even went so far as to re-calibrate it, but they are still murky. Re: the flash - resource intensive intros (or some would say any intro or "splash" page) are generally considered poor design. You are putting a barrier between your information and the user.

I would add that for an art site, constricting the viewable portion of the screen and pinning it to the left side is probably not the best presentation. I've built half a dozen art sites and they are all full screen with white backgrounds behind the art when it is displayed. The large areas of brown on the screen (which are considerable and make up the majority of the screen space on any monitor larger than 17" at 1024 resolution) affect the way the colors in the art are perceived. That's why galleries show on white walls.

Not a very helpful critique, I realize, since these aren't really issues that can be addressed within the template of the current design (aside from dumping the intro and fixing the images), but my two cents anyway.