Client Brief-G O L D F A C T O R Y

Gold Factory is an online hub for local creatives. Similar to a blog, it allows users to display their work, and leave comments. The current website has a lot of scope for improvement which is great from our perspective. The design follows the corporate style of many other exhibition websites. It is very simplistic with bands of gold and grey and simplistic fonts which provides a blank canvas so the main focus is the artwork. From a usability perspective though, the site is appalling. There is very little to suggest the purpose of the site and the homepage consists of streams text which are too easily to ignore. The whole site seems a bit unorganised which leaves the user confused.

Artists profile pages follow a more logical layout with images to break up the text making the information much easier an interesting to read.

Navigation is the key aspect we need to focus on. I think we need to also distinguish what the client wants from the site as currently this is not clear. Is the main focus the exhibitions? or the artists?

Research needs to be done into exhibition websites. From visiting sites for Tate Gallery, Baltic Gallery, New Art Exchange, V&A etc I have found they follow a similar trend: quite formal, simplistic and to the point but at the same modern. So once we distinguish what is needed from the site, we need to decide on what avenue to go down, modern and formal, or more artistic and expressive? Audience?