Class:MFA Illustration 2020/Week 22

Last Week

• Check-in on the status of domain updates and email addresses for the group.
• Week three postcard & business card identity review

This Week

• Catch up on any lingering website domain or email address setup.
• Review the last set of personal identity updates and your 'one more thing' projects.
• Brief introduction to the website project and discussion of your plan.

Notes

My bookmarks of illustration portfolios is here for you

Portfolio + Illustration

Video Notes

• Internet and email account questions & discussion
• Final super exciting print and identity project review
• Brief introduction to the website project and discussion of your plan

Assignment

Your assignment for this week is to leverage the discussion from class and resources Site Building (CMS) Solutions & Email Hosting Services to locate and try a handful of online portfolio services over the next few weeks. We will review your progress every week as we close in on the best plan for each of you.

You will be trying multiple website options (Squarespace, Wix, Cargo, etc..) and/or many themes.

Few things to keep in mind:

• Do you need project galleries or lots of different images in a flat container?
• What are the most logical navigation and project list options for you?
• How well does your theme work on mobile?
• Does your website design match your personal identity (Logo, type, color and all)?

For next week your assignment is:

• Look at a handful of illustrators' websites (link above), take note of what you like and what you do not.
• If you have a website already, go look at it! What do you want to change? Does it look like the rest of your self-promotion work? Do you need to change the way you are curating or organizing your work?
• Begin to craft a plan for what you think will be ideal.
• Gather up a fresh set of images that loosely represent the type of work you will have on your website.
• Study up on Cargo Collective, Adobe Portfolio, Squarespace, Weebly, Wix, and Format. You can trial all of these for free before you make them actual live websites with real domains.
• Explore the themes available to you on all these services and try TWO different explorations.

Clarification: You can try two different themes on SquareSpace, you can try one theme on Cargo Collective and one theme on Wix (for example).

Each of the options above will let you explore/test a website design and generate a custom URL that you can share with others/me for review. Some of them will also generate a preview code or password for when you want to send it to somebody for review.

Then:

1. Write out a paragraph or list plan for website updates moving forward! You can make it an illustration or whiteboard-like mind map if you want.
2. Be prepared to share/present your plan in class next week.