Beth E Peterson
c/o Cattails Publishing LLC
484 Williamsport Pike #261
Martinsburg, WV 25404
USA
240-527-0900
Text and Artwork:
Copyright © 2008 Beth E Peterson.
All rights reserved.
|
Alex is not an artist herself, but she is a great help to some of us!
She is the
designer of the award-winning site, "Paintings by Wayne Peterson".
Suppose you pulled a book from the library shelf because you liked its interesting cover.
But upon leafing through the pages, you noticed that two-thirds of the book was
devoted to one topic, such as a fictional story about a medieval knight,
and one-third was devoted to a completely unrelated topic, such as bicycling in the Outback.
You would probably put the book back on the
shelf, laugh at the author, and wonder what publisher was dumb enough to print that!
And yet, I've seen many websites that do just that; they throw all of their favorite
topics together on one website, create a flashy intro page that acts as the
audience-attracting book
cover, and use their graphic layout to act as their central unifying theme for otherwise
unrelated content. This is not my idea of a good website.
You do not need to have a complex central unifying theme in order to have a good website.
On the contrary, a simple statement of
purpose and audience will help you to maintain your focus throughout your website's
creation.
Define the purpose of your website:
I am an artist who wants to show my paintings on the web (and maybe sell a few)...
Define your audience:
to my family, friends and any others who love art.
The purpose you have stated for your website states very clearly which topics can
be safely covered; this is the central unifying theme of the site. In the above stated
purpose, I can talk about myself as an artist, my paintings, and my prices and how
to buy from me, although this last, as noted by the parentheses, is of the least importance
to my site.
But what if your purpose is more general than the one that I chose? For example, I
have a lot of different interests and I want to talk about all of them. The central
unifying theme in the above statement is I, myself. Therefore some information about myself
should be integrated into each page of the site in order to tie each unrelated topic to
the central theme.
The audience that you have defined for your website will help you to
set an appropriate tone of voice and maintain that voice throughout your site.
Perhaps you are warm and casual with your friends and family, perhaps you prefer
to be cool and aloof. Just remember though, that your friends and family will be
the first to laugh at you if you don't sound like your familiar old self. So be
careful how you choose to speak to them.
Notice too, that I've ranked my audience by
their level of importance to me. I think of the people that are the most important
to me while I am designing my site. My father-in-law is very new to the web, will he
have trouble navigating the site? My sister has a very old, slow computer, will the
graphics take too long to load? One uses Netscape, the other uses Internet Explorer,
will they both be able to view the site equally well? What would they most like to see,
the neon flashing banner or my paintings tastefully displayed? Your friends and
family are strangers to everybody else but you. So your friends and family are a
reasonably good indicator of how strangers will also respond to your site.
Now that you have a theme and an intended audience in mind for your website, it's time
to start laying out the pages. Don't choose the fonts and graphic elements yet,
just work with the content that fits the theme of your site and organize it in such a
manner that it would please both you and your intended audience. Only after that foundation is laid
is it okay to consider the detailing.
|
