Recently finished a new web design for Los Angeles-based actor and entertainer, D. Matt Worley. I don’t usually post this kind of stuff here, but until I find time to put together a portfolio I figured here is good a place as any for a little summary.
Matt was most concerned with a) showcasing his work in an interesting, visually appealing way, and b) making it as simple as possible for talent scouts to contact either himself or his representation. To satisfy the first request, we agreed on a portfolio-focused WordPress theme that allowed us to display a selection of headshots and recent work photos prominently as the visitor first enters the site.
The theme also enabled us to showcase his extensive television, film, and voice-over work in easy-to-navigate galleries. Moderate custom development was needed to satisfy a few formatting and design issues and to add social sharing capabilities across the site.
In the interest of keeping the overall site simple and easy to navigate, to view any of Matt’s work the visitor only needs to venture a couple clicks deep. Furthermore, the information needed by talent scouts is displayed on the homepage, below the site’s navigation. Adding this information below the left nav in this way loads up the left element of the page and perhaps makes it feel a bit crowded; I might rethink this presentation in the future, but for now it was important to Matt to have this information as easily accessible as possible. Also, all of Matt’s relevant social channels are displayed prominently at the bottom of the nav element.
Additionally, the entire site is SEO optimized with meta descriptions, meta keywords, and an intuitive permalink structure. While preparing the site to be indexed appropriately, this also ensures that when any of the content on the site is shared elsewhere (e.g. via Facebook and Twitter) that the appropriate title, picture, and description appears in the update or post – a best practice, but also an exercise in making sure the entire experience is seamless across the web.
An entirely separate site was designed for mobile. To satisfy Matt’s 2nd request for simplicity, the mobile site is merely an interactive calling card with few pages. Each phone number is linked so when clicked, it queues up to be dialed immediately. Moreover, the original, non-mobile site is designed to display according to the mobile device that is viewing it. Since the non-mobile design displays fine on tablets and other large-screened devices, these devices see that site, not the mobile version. Likewise for smaller-screened mobile devices – they are served the mobile version below.
All of Matt’s video work is hosted on Vimeo. In terms of design, I decided it would be most appropriate to showcase his videos in a custom channel. This allows us to add projects that Matt has collaborated on but the content of which might be owned/hosted by someone else (e.g. Your Heart is Mime). It also gives us some creative freedom that a mere profile doesn’t allow. Vimeo was chosen as the host because of its active artist community and for how easy they make it to build connections between groups, channels, and other users. The display and usability was also preferred to other sites such as YouTube. All videos were titled, tagged, and described in a way that is conducive to SEO, as well. (Though many claim YouTube performs better in searches due to a) Google owning YouTube and b) YouTube having more users than Vimeo – and indeed this might be true – I prefer a focused strategy that funnels users to a select few locations rather than going at it with a shotgun and spreading the content and visitors too thin. It’s also my opinion that when you spray the web with content you contribute not only to ruining the web and making it harder to discover meaningful content, but that it also seems woefully unprofessional and amateur and reflects poorly on you and/or the client. /rant.)
Lastly, all elements of the overall design are connected with each other in relevant ways as to make the “experience” of D Matt Worley online simple and cohesive. Still picking at a few things and refining some stuff, but for the most part it’s finished. Was good fun.
fin
