About Us:

Sylvie Gray is a NH native and has been painting professionally and recreationally since 2008. Her works are featured at the Southern NH Medical Center and Shelburne Museum (Shelburne, VT) gift shops, and she has done commissioned pieces for wedding gifts, memorial services, and custom orders. She works primarly with acrylic and pencil, and prefers landscapes and architecture as subject matter. Prints of existing pieces can be ordered for decorating or as customized post cards. Sylvie is always looking for new commissioned work, and can design custom decorations or gifts based on photographs or through an in person visit. She currently hopes to expand her business to include decorating for hotels, historical sites, museums, and gardens. In her free time Sylvie enjoys driving her convertible, adventuring, and walking her yellow lab Mia. We thank you so much for visiting, please enjoy the site!

Development Process:

The intent of Sylvie's Art Studio site is to showcase the works of the artist in order to generate future business. The primary audience is businesses and individuals interested in local art or prints. The goal was to have a clean, simple to use site designed to draw the attention of the user to various past projects. It was crucial the site provide a gallery for works, as well as a contact page with a fillable form for potential new customers. The tones used for the majority of the pages were soothing earth tones designed to provide a nice backdrop to the art and text. The exception was the about us page, which has a full page background designed to immerse the reader in the work. The navigation bar was designed to remain consistent throughout the site, and uses a nice gradient shading of the same earth tones as the main page. This ensures a clean aesthetic and allows any user to navigate easily and consistently from page to page. As suggested during the peer review, the navigation bar was changed to be flush with the left hand side of the screen and not run below the bottom page margin. This provides a cleaner more defined visual for the end user. Also, the text blocks and most page bodies were placed into a margined, centered block on the page to ensure the text was not easily obstructed by other page features. A border was added where appropriate to break up the page and create a nice visual effect.

Defense of Design:

The final site design combined peer feedback and the original site concept to create a polished, easy to use, and aesthetically pleasing product for the end user. The main page features an earth tone background and navigation bar, which contrasts nicely with the text and draws attention to the sole piece depicted on the page. Having one centered piece of art was chosen for the home page in order to peak the users interest, and draw their attention deeper into the site. The text block was updated to have a border in order to break up the page nicely and highlight the greeting message. It was recommended during peer review to change the colored titles for each page, which was not done. The splash of color amid the earth tones provides contrast and adds an artistic, fun, and unique element to each page. The navigation bar is located on the left throughout every page for consistency, and uses a gradient of the same earth tone background to differentiate it from the page itself. A highlight hover over feature was added to the navigation bar for ease of use by visitors to the site. The borders of the navigation bar were updated and defined in order to create a more organized look for end users as well. The about us page is formatted similar to the other pages, but with the addition of a full page art background. This is meant to immerse the end user in a state of mind, and the effect came out nicely. The text was updated to bold face after peer review to enhance readability. The contacts page returns to the earth tone background, and is left aligned with the navigation bar for a more professional look. It contains a simple fillable form to allow the user to contact the artist via email, as well as other contact options. As a video was required by the rubric, an uplifting painting video was included here as well, as a thank you to site visitors for their interest. The events page features a simple table over earth tones detailing upcoming events. This was designed to be simple to understand for the user, and easy to update for the site owner as events will change regularly. An image was added to the bottom of the page to break up the design, add some color, and keep the art theme consistent. Finally, the gallery page provides numerous past projects as clickable thumbnails laid out in neat rows. This creates a nice visual, and allows the user to browse and select any images that spark their interest. No other features were added to this page other than the navigation bar and footer by design, as the entire focus should be on the art. In all the site aesthetic came together nicely, and remains consistent throughout the pages. A helvetica based font was selected throughout for consistency, readability, and usability across numerous platforms. It has a steady feel without being boring to the eye, and is easily read on the beige background. The persistent footer and navigation bar give the site a feeling of organization and cohesion to the end user as well.

Vision for the Future:

If the site were to be used in a professional capacity, the first update would remove the video and replace it with one relevant to the artist. Perhaps having a start to finish video taking the user from blank canvas through finished project would be nice. This text explaining the site design process would also be removed to clean up the aesthetics of the About Us page. Ideally I would have liked to include an interactive and up-datable calendar on the events page, but this would require a higher level of knowledge than I have at this point. The addition of other pages of different galleries would be nice, and could be broken up neatly by genre or topic. One thing that frustrated me until I ran out of time was the two images in the gallery. No matter how I rotated them, formatted the CSS sheet, or saved them in various orientations in the source file, they remained horizontal on the site thumbnails. I was unable to fix this issue despite spending a large amount of time working various attempts as it would make the page more appealing to the eye. If the site was to go live I would also recommend a link to the artist’s social media accounts be added to the contact page and vice-versa. This would generate more visitors to both pages and ultimately increase interest and revenue. That being said I am immensely pleased with the final product, and enjoyed the journey from concept to functional site.