Website

I built a website on Squarespace after having a bit of a look around at all the options (Cargo collective, wix etc.) and deciding it was one I found easiest to use. It was also the cheapest because they offer the first year at half price if you sign up with a students email, which works out at £5 a month. The only downside is you have to pay for the year at once (£60) and they sneakily avoid telling you that until the end. I've been waiting until I have the scratch to pay for for it but you only get to keep a website draft for about 10 days without paying before it gets deleted. This means I've had to build the same website three times. I should hopefully be making it live soon and I bought the domain 'alexbrownillustration.com' (also from Squarespace) so I'm good to go. This post has some screen shots of the draft but it will look the same.

I opted for a very straightforward design which should be very easy to navigate. It has the title (Alex Brown illustration) on the side and right below a list of categories of my work (No Country For Old Men, The Uncanny, Posters, Portraiture and Photography). There is no specific home page, its just set as one of my galleries, at the moment its all the work I made based around 'No Country For Old Men' but I might change it as I keep uploading content and changing stuff around in the future. When you click on an image it appears larger and you can click through them in that viewing mode one at a time. 

I included a hyperlink to my Bandcamp page where I upload music to create connections between all my creative output. When I emailed Molly Fairhurst for PP last year she said it was a good idea to use social media to just show your general interests because clients get an idea of what you're like and the kinds of work you'd be suitable for or interested in as a result. This isn't exactly like that but I think it uses a similar principle and it all helps form more of a holistic creative identity. 

There is also a hyperlink to my Instagram. 

I originally had a 'contact' page which would show my email when you clicked on it but I found a way of adding it as a tag line beneath the title so it's always visible and I think that's better. Lou Bones also mentioned in her talk that it was important to have your contact details visible immediately.  

UPDATE: My Website is now live - https://www.alexbrownillustration.com/