One-Night Website Part 7: Adding Content

Here’s the website with content added and photos sized to fit. I chose this design because it was fully CSS and included some nice callout boxes. I also liked the palette of colors: melon and rich grey. These colors are in the artist’s work, yet create an subtle background that doesn’t detract from the work.

The header includes the artist’s main photo of herself and two more photos of the two categories she creates art in: gourds and leather.

I built out the three main pages for the meeting: the Home page, a Product-grid page, and an Item page which includes the description of the piece and a PayPal button to purchase.

One of the more difficult parts in building the 3 pages for the meeting was working in someone else’s css. This free template included a layered Photoshop file which made it easier to figure out what was going on with the pieces.

The final, critical element was working the SEO into the content. I had a list of keywords that WESST had developed for my client and I went back and forth between the old content and the keyword list, working in what I could.

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Epilogue: The meeting with the client went well, and only one part of the design was changed: the client requested the thumbnails in the product-grid page not be cropped. I really liked the dramatic cropping of the photos, and explained that the they were “details” of the art. The client acquiesced, but in the end I used what she was more comfortable with. She’s going to have to live with the site for longer than I am, after all!

Content was tweaked, photos discussed, and I went home thinking I was going to fall into bed and catch up on a night of only 5 hours of sleep. But what’s funny is that I didn’t feel tired at all when I got home and instead caught up on some reading and social networking.

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I hope you liked this series on creating a website design in one night. You can visit artist Amï Diallo’s ongoing website design here: www.amidiallo.com. Please note that not all of her links work, i.e. the PayPal buttons are just placeholders for now.

Have you had the experience of having to create a design in one night? What shortcuts do you use? Please leave a comment and let us know how you did it!