The Art League Site Brief

Alrighty... after perusing the Danville Art League's less than stellar display of their website, I typed out a brief summary of what this League's about, what they've got, what their site's got, and what their site really needs to work on:

DANVILLE ART LEAGUE SITE BRIEF

INTRODUCTION

The Danville Art League began in 1938 as an art club with 12 members. In just 11 years, that number grew to over one hundred. In 1955, the Art League held its first Art In The Park festival, which continues to this day. The DAL was reorganized and restructured in 1991 after membership declined due to few classes and lack of community interest. To increase the member size, the DAL was opened to a 60-mile radius around Danville. The DAL experienced a rebirth in the 90’s thanks to introducing the Town and Country Amateur Exhibition, the Holiday Art Sale, offering more classes and informal art sessions, and operating Gallery 126.

At the turn of the new millennium, the Art League was flourishing, with 300 members showing their artwork in the First National Bank branches, the Vermilion County Museum, and at Provena United Samaritans Medical Center, among others.

In 2010, the DAL raised more than $120,000 to purchase a vacant Red Cross building, and after two months of repairs and remodeling, moved into its new home on the corner of Franklin and Seminary Streets in downtown Danville. The DAL also expanded its range of classes to include more childrens’ classes and workshops for families and seniors.

DANVILLE ART LEAGUE MISSION STATEMENT

“All people are entitled to exposure in the arts. Our goals are to stimulate creativity and art appreciation through classes and/or informal sessions at the Art League studio or in the field, to appreciate and understand the accomplishment of others, to provide artist with places to exhibit their work and to act as a resource center for members and the public.”


PRODUCTS AND SERVICES OFFERED

The DAL offers a wide variety of classes and workshops in such fields as painting, photography, jewelry making, carving, pastels, quilting, china painting, drawing and sculpture. Membership includes participation in DAL exhibits, discounts in DAL classes and at area art supply, photo finishing and frame shops. Members attend special programs and receive preferred status on trips, seminars and workshops.

Members can also take advantage of DAL recources such as books, videos, and members’ traded knowledge, in addition to receiving a newsletter keeping members up to date on news, events, trips, classes, programs, shows and exhibits. As a resource center, the Art League also keeps you posted on what other art leagues, groups, and museums are doing in the area. Members also have access to the Art League’s open studio hours.

COMPANY SIZE, REACH, AND TARGET AUDIENCE

Currently, the Art League has a membership of over 300 active artisans, and thanks to opening the accessibility to join the DAL for up to a 60-mile radius, the League has continued to maintain and grow into a healthy and vibrant League. As for a target audience, thankfully, the DAL has done the right thing in expanding its range of classes and workshops recently for families and children, as well as increasing the number of classes for seniors. Now, its target audience reaches a much broader spectrum of people living within that 60-mile radius.

ABOUT THE OLD WEBSITE

On the plus side, the DAL site does have plenty of information on upcoming events, a historical timeline, plenty of photos of events since 2007, and a section for published stories about the Art League. You can find an index of monthly newsletters going back to July of 2008. The site's not lacking for info, that's for sure.

On the negative side, however, we’ve got a lot to fix here. For starters, we see hardly any nice shots of any artwork done by the DAL, and for some reason, instead of showing some local art in the header, we’ve got rudimentary squiggles that a 3-year old might have done. If people want to be impressed by the site, these squiggles would be a major turn off. We’ve got even more childlike squiggles and drawings on the “About Us” page, right next to a picture of the Art League president. Let’s ditch these preschool drawings and show some DAL art, please!

The site’s also got an easily fixable problem with the basic layout. Everything’s stuck on the left side of the page, so every page appears shoved over there. The whole site needs a much more balanced look.

As for color scheme, we see different colors for these page title bars, with the newsletter bar a dark blue, the photo gallery in a toxic yellow (and in various sizes, for some reason), and the “About Us” page is broken into three light blue boxes for its titles. The site really needs a streamlined and CONSISTENT look to each page, so everything feels like it’s more connected. And the dull, light gray background won't be pulling anyone in, either.

Also, about half of the pages have a few photos on the left, but they’re not consistent in size. You’d like to go from page to page and have the same grid structure, so the pages flow better together, and avoid this uneven approach where every page has its own structure and layout.

There’s also a bit of a continuity problem with the navbar butting up right next to the header on the home page, dropping down a bit on the membership page, and then dropping down some more on the rest of the pages. Again, the whole site really needs to find a consistent grid pattern so navigating from page to page looks seamless. The navbar also doesn’t have a single dropdown subheader, and this site could really use that to better direct its clients and customers more easily.

Also, half of the pages are just lists of links and nothing more. The “Stories”, “Newsletters” , “Forms” and “Photo Gallery” pages have nothing in the way of any art or pictures at all... just a whole bunch of links. That’s got to be fixed.

Another thing that needs to be addressed is the problem of having many links open up as separate pdf files outside of the website itself. You want your visitors to stay at your site, instead of opening up pdf after pdf. On the home page alone, each of the four sidebar links opens up a pdf instead of navigating you to another page on the site.

I’m not too concerned about the typography right now, as we’ve got much heavier issues to tackle first. Same for the background. That dull light dray’s gonna have to go, but that’s a simple change. Let’s tackle the structure first.

WHAT THE NEW WEBSITE NEEDS

1. A grid structure that’s consistent throughout every page.
2. Art, art, art! Let’s show what the DAL’s producing here!
3. A more attractive and “adult” header. Dump the squiggles and show some class.
4. More functional navbar with subheads.
5. Did I say more ART yet?
6. Ditch all the pdf navigation away from the site and build pages to keep visitors ON your site.


So that's a brief brief of what I'll be tackling for the first big project in our class.