WEB SITE DESIGN by An Artist for Artists

Custom Web Site Design:
Have your web site designed by an artist! Sandy understands how to use the internet media to showcase artwork. She can create a web site for you that is crisp, concise, easy to navigate and really highlights your achievements as an artist. Your custom art web site will be individualized according to your preferences, but would typically include a Home Page, Art Page, Biography Page, Contact Page, and Link Page. Most artists also choose to have an Individual Page for each piece of artwork, which has an enlarged image and additional information about each piece of art.

Getting Started With Your Web Site:
First, think about what you might want your web site to look like. Do you want the background or text to be certain colors? Have you seen other art web sites that you would like yours to look like? Do you prefer to have Sandy choose the layout and colors that would best make your artwork stand out?

Second, make a list of the artwork you would like to have on your web site. You must have a digital image of each piece of artwork you would like to display online. Digital images of your work can be created in several ways. Many artists photograph their own artwork with their digital camera or they have a professional photographer do that for them. Other artists use a scanner to create digital images or they have their artwork scanned by a professional photo lab service (such as Photographic Works in Tucson). Sandy can use images you email to her (those are JPEG files) or images you send to her on a disk (either JPEG or TIFF files) to create your web site. Your online images will only be as good as your digital images, though, so make sure the digital images of your artwork are of the highest quality.

Finally, jot down what you would like on your biography and list any awards you have won or shows or galleries exhibiting your work (see Sandy's "Artist Info" Page for ideas).

Other Information You Need To Know:
Once a web site is designed, it has to be published on the World Wide Web and assigned a web address. Sandy can create your web site for you and you can upload it to the Web and maintain it yourself, or Sandy can publish and maintain your site for you. Sandy will research to see if the domain name you would like (such as "www.janedoe.com") is available, purchase it for you, and upload your web site to the same hosting service she uses for her own web site at her cost, which is $35 a year.

How Much Will It Cost?:
Sandy will create the Unique Design Layout of your web site for $300; this would be the background and navigation used on each page of your web site. Once your Unique Design Layout is finished and OK'd by you, each web page is charged at a rate of $40 per page.

Purchasing and registering your domain name and uploading to the World Wide Web is $35 a year.

Once your web site is established, Sandy can add pages to your site at any time for $40 per page, and smaller changes (editing, adding, or deleting text or images, etc.) is charged at $40 per hour (and most small changes take much less than an hour to complete).

Estimating Your Web Site Cost:
Here is how you can estimate how much your web site would cost to set up:

As mentioned above, most art web sites consist of at least five Basic Pages (Home, Art, Biography, Contact, and Link Pages). At $40 a page, these Basic Pages would cost $200 to create once the Unique Layout of your web site has been designed for $300. So, a simple art site with only the five Basic Pages would cost about $500 to create and $35 to activate on the Web.

A simple site with only one Art Page has some limitations, however, because it only allows for one page of small artwork images (called "thumbnails") and there is a limit to how many thumbnails can be placed on one web site page. Therefore, most artists choose to have more than one Art Page and choose to add enlarged image pages on their web sites.

Look at the list of artwork that you would like to have on your web site. How many pages will it take to adequately display your work? If you have 12 or fewer items, you might be able to have a thumbnail image of each, all on one Art Page (one Art Page would cost $40). Maybe you prefer to have the artwork organized onto several pages? Sandy divided her artwork into three categories, each on a separate page ($40 x 3). Do you want an Individual Page with an enlarged image and details for each piece of art, as Sandy has done on this site? (Add $40 per page.)

Adding the estimated cost for your art pages to the design fee ($300) and the fee for the five Basic Web Site Pages ($200) will give you a total cost for your web site.

A more complex site like Sandy's, which has over 24 pages, takes much more time to create. Using the fee schedule explained above, the cost to create a 24 page web site would be: 24 pages at $40 per page ($960) plus the design fee ($300), for a total cost of $1260 (plus $35 to activate on the Web).

Sandy will discuss costs, design ideas, and the size and organization of your web site with you before beginning the design for your individualized art site.

Contact Sandy regarding custom web site design by clicking her email address: sandyep@cox.net