Less is More: Top Designers’ websites
October 14, 2008
Designers wanting to advance their careers are sometimes advised to concentrate on creating a personal brand. With this in mind, I decided to look at how some renowned graphic designers present themselves and their work online.
Most of the designers shown here have personal websites to showcase their portfolio. There are a few sites representing studios operating under the designer’s name. The common thread for all is the use of absolute simplicity in layout. In some cases, there is very little or no visual evidence of any personal “branding”.
Paulus M. Dreibholz
Nick Bell
Jerome Rigaud
Daniel Eatock
Louise Fili
Alexandre Bettler
Adam Hayes
Marian Bantjes
Jerry Kuyper
Massimo Vignelli
Susan Kare
Which of these examples do you like the most? Is the minimalist (in some cases, absolutely stark) nature of these layouts something which works in every case? What do you feel that you know about each designer after viewing their sites?
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Comments
6 responses to “Less is More: Top Designers’ websites”
Please share your thoughts
Jerry Kuyper is a great man, friendly too, but I can’t help but think he’s doing himself a disservice with that single image website.
That said, I doubt he needs the help of organic search results in order to find new work (except for a specific ‘Jerry Kuyper’ search perhaps).
David Airey’s last blog post … Logo of the month #10
David:
It’s true that Jerry Kuyper and the other designers mentioned here have reputations which are already well established and would have no shortage of work already. All the same, like you I was very surprised that many of these sites don’t extend themselves further.
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hmm… I wouldn’t call it “less is more” in this case. As the reasons why most of the sites above are so plain have very little to do with the designer’s preference for minimalistic classic style. I think lack of time and interest in extra promotion, especially online, and lack of online experience and HTML knowledge would explain them better.
On many of such sites Graphic designers don’t even bother displaying the content as HTML text and save everything as graphics, even with web-safe fonts, take vignelli.com as an example.
Saying that, I do quite like Marian Bantjes’ web site, mainly because you still can see her design style shining through there and because of the up to date articles and samples of work.
inspirationbit’s last blog post … GAG: Get and Give
inspirationbit:
Thanks for a very thought provoking contribution. Your thoughts pretty much mirror my own for most of these sites. When I was researching this post I was very surprised to find so an individual designer’s style in many of the sites I looked at (and included here). That’s why I ended the post with the question: “What do you feel that you know about each designer after viewing their sites?”
Marian Bantjes’ site and also Susan Kare’s site are the ones which I believe give the best and most immediate sense of each as a designer.