Website: James-Arnold.co.uk

Today I’ve launched a new site for Lincoln based photographer James Arnold, I know I know… working on Christmas day but it seemed like a good time to put the site live. You know, all you guys are probably sitting around, twiddling your thumbs, waiting for your mum/wife/girlfriend/mistress to cook your dinner, so you turn to the internet for entertainment and BAM you see a new site up! Genius right?

Anyway, enough of that, it’s been a really nice project to work on, James & I both had some really strong ideas. Three words came up over and over – Simple, Strong, Clean and I think this has translated nicely into the final product.

The Brand

First thing I thought about was the logo, I got some ideas down on paper and then translated them to screen. I actually ended up sending a whole bunch over to James, loads more than I would normally send.

In the end we settled on one of the simplest concepts, you might groan – Oh it’s Helvetica… but I don’t care, it works and it looks good.

The Site

I actually came up with quite a lot of the idea for the site while sitting next to Ashley at the FOWD Tour Glasgow, in the form of random sketches in the back of my Moleskine. Then they went into my layout pad at home, and I showed them to James, he got really excited about the concepts and could see exactly where I was going which was great.

After the sketches I did a proof of concept or two and once I was happy with how it was working I started translating that to WordPress. Man I love me some WordPress!

The Home Page

Roll on a few months and the build is complete, the home page features a giant background image for some wow factor (always guaranteed with a James Arnold photo).

The About & Contact Page

The about and contact page carry on the full size image, with a nice layer of content over the top.

The Galleries

The galleries are defiantly my favourite part of the site, so simple, it’s just throwing the images right up in your face. The images automatically scale to the height of your browser window, when you are on a gallery you can use your arrow keys on the keyboard to easily flick between photos, nice. I’ve done something pretty hot with the menu too, (thanks to Jamie for help with the JavaScript here).

The Blog

The blog is a bit of a contrast to the other parts of the site, more structure, more white space. Hopefully James will keep this updated, I’m hoping for some behind the scenes stuff!

Anyway, check it out – James-Arnold.co.uk – and let me know what you think!

Comments

RoboKitten

25th December 2009

Nice post Rick, I giggled at the mistress bit.
I love the site, it looks awesome, ‘Simple, Strong & Clean’ really packs a punch.
I had the pleasures of being in your presence when you worked on a lot of this, and I have enjoyed watching it being assembled. (Can I say assembled? I am going with it anyway)

Loving the portfolio pages and how visual they are, James must be really happy with it :)

Mike

25th December 2009

Clever use of CSS/Javascript :D I like!

My only (and pretty much the only issue), problem would probably be the loading time! Large images being resized in the browser etc.

But thats just nitpicking really! haha. great website! Inspiring to redesign my own site!

Rick

25th December 2009

Thanks Kym :)

Thanks Mike – Load times on a photo portfolio is always going to be an issue, reducing the file size, of course, reduces the quality of the image and I am sure you can imagine a photographer wouldn’t be too keen on that. Hopefully people will be patient while the images load, it is defiantly worth waiting a few seconds, James has some amazing photos.

Ashley

25th December 2009

Love how it turned out, very striking. Like you, my favourite part is the gallery and being able to skim through the pictures with my keyboard. Good work, Nunn! Oh, and Merry Christmas ;)