Website Analysis

Navigation

Intent

María Jesús Contreras' website aims to sell products as well as advertising for her projects.

Voice

• Professional
• Clear
• Direct
• Fashionable
• Quirky

The website shows its contents and intents clearly and directly with an organized and simplistic composition. The design of the typography and its layout is very professional, but at the same time, the website does not seen too serious because of the vivid style of the artworks and the playful act of placing a quirky illustrated portrait of dogs in the place of the artist profile.

Tone

While the style is highly consistent for the website as a whole, there are some deviations in tone in different pages. While “about” and links to different projects in the front page have a very concise and professional tone, the advertisement for the goods at the end of the front page and the “apparel” page have a much more funky and dynamic tone. This matches the lively art style of the products and attracts the viewer and customers’ interest. The extra movements in these shop pages and links also add more fun to the website while keeping the main contents clear and professional.

Brand

• Modern
• Vibrant
• Lively
• Youthful

The design of the hyperlinks to her projects reminds people of fashion magazines. The simplistic white background, sanserif black fonts, and the orderly alignment in composition bring out the bright colors and lively compositions of the illustrations, emphasizing the modern and vibrant style they established.

Personas

1. Art Student

Kyle is a student studying in art college and he needs to write an essay to analyze a contemporary artist's style and 2D works.

At first sight of the website, Kyle gets a clear vision of how the style is like. The distinct style is effective shown in the front page, accompanied by composition and text design that complement it. He also finds the biography in English helpful for his brief introduction in the assignment, but he hopes to see more information about her, like age, city, usual topics, successful past works, etc. When Kyle scroll down, he thought the links the other websites are other parts of the portfolio. He tried entering them, but he doesn’t have access to some of them because they need subscription, and he cannot understand some other ones because he knows little Spanish. However, he soon realized that he can check out Maria Jesus Contreras’ works in the “illustration” navigation. He was really happy to see that all the pictures are downloadable and have their titles, date, and medium written clearly on the side, so he can cite them conveniently and accurately. However, he feels confused that there is no text title for the website and that the artist's full name is not in a significant place.

2. Magazine Editor

Kara is a magazine editor that needs to find an illustrator to draw the cover of the next magazine to be published. She needs someone with a modern style that can work with a bright color pallette, which would enable both the printed version and the electronic version to catch the eye.

On the front page, Kara can quickly get the sense of the style. Through the typography and layout design, Kara can tell immediately that María Jesús Contreras' style would be consistent a modern magazine. She also saw how Contreras worked for the New York Times and the New Yorker, so she is further determined that Contreras can be suitable for this job. She is also given access by her company to all of the online journals that need subscribtion, so she can check how Contreras' illustrations work for different context and what kind her magazine needs. Kara can also check her other works in the "illustration" page and on her instagram. Although Kara doesn't need the advertisements for T-shirts and the "apparel" and "prints" page, she does not find them bothering or annoying. If Kara made up her mind to commission Contreras, she can easily find her email on the front page.

3.Buyer for Art or Fashion products

Anne is an art lover who happens to see Contreras'work in an online journal. She really likes this colorful style and decided to checkout her website to see if there's more work like this that she can download.

Anne is facinated by the design of the front page, but she isn't really interested in Contreras' other projects or contact methods. Seeing the advertisement on the front page, she is able to immediately recognize what's it for even though she's unfamiliar with the language, so she checked out the online shop. She then turned to the "illustration" page just to enjoy more of the illustrated works. She is also thrilled to find there are pages for buying t-shirts and prints, and she is really interested by the T-shirts with pop-out animations. Shopping through these pages, she finally decided to buy a T-shirt and a print of a cat to place in her apartment. After this experience, Anne is left a great impression on Contreras' logo, style, and significant works, but she might fail to memorize her name because it's not written clearly on the front page.

Wireframe

Copy Deck

• INICIO
• ILLUSTRATION
• APPAREL
• PRINTS

ABOUT

Estudié diseño gráfico en la Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile e hice un certificado académico en artes en la misma universidad. Actualmente estoy trabajando con clientes en diferentes partes del mundo de manera independiente; Realizo trabajos editoriales, portadas de discos y todo tipo de soluciones gráficas.

I studied graphic design at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, and made an academic certificate in arts at the same university. Currently working with clients in different parts of the world in a freelance way; I do editorial work, album covers and all kinds of graphic solutions.

MAIL

NEW YORK TIMES

Article Ilustration, The Age of anti-ambition

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THE ATLANTIC

Article Ilustration, The Resurrection of Retail

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PUNCH DRINK

To Come of (Drinking) Age on YouTube

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THE NEW YORKER

For the developing world, refrigeration is growth. In Rwanda, it could spark an economic transformation.

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WE TRANSFER

Interview

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NEW YORK MAGAZINE

'I Don't Know How My Show Is Doing' - Vulture

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BANDCAMP

Article Ilustration, The Beer-Metal World Tour

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IT´S NICE THAT

Interview

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KIBLIND MAG

Interview

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NUEVOS DISEÑOS

NEW

CATALOGO

TIENDA POLERAS

FASTER!

CATALOGO

Competition

Compared to many other illustrators, María Jesús Contreras' website pays more atention to stylizing the layout and the consistency of typography design and pictorial style. Another advantage of her website is that she has all her major projects and past interviews shown clearly on the front page, which is really helpful for conmissioners who need to get a better understanding of her past works and style as well as people trying to do research on her. The simple act of having the name, date, and medium of the piece also creates great convenience for people who needs to reference her works and cite them.

Another significant advantage of María Jesús Contreras' website is how her links to past projects are inserted into stylized preview and text. In contrast, many artists' portfolio does not give a well-conveyed preview of style on the front page or such stylized and clear navigation. For example, another portfolio of an artist that do illustrations for journals and magazines is Tania Que's website, which is in general a successful portfolio that has a simplistic layout, relaxing voice, and well-designed logo that complements her art style well. However, compared to María Jesús Contreras' navigation to her past projects on the front page, Tania Que's navigation to her past works is purely guided by text with no preview images. This can cause the viewer to be impatient while navigating through it one by one without a overview of her style.

In all, María Jesús Contreras' website has a composition, typography, and text layout that go with her art style well. It is both easy and enjoyable to navigate through the website, which makes it quite competitive among illustrators.