Forming An Online Presence

Wil Freeborn has 10 years of digital media experience working with clients such as BBC Scotland, National Museum of Scotland and Future Museums. He shares his thoughts on how his online presence has evolved.

There was a time I would spend a few months building an online folio that I would have up and running then after a year or so redo it, I don’t do this anymore.

I’m finding that rather than building a site from scratch I’m picking and choosing readily available resources together that suit my needs. It’s not really a unique way of working as there are plenty of artists & designers using the same approach for their online presence. I use a combination of the following

• ⁃ flickr to host my pictures
• ⁃ a portfolio – cargo, indexhibit or maybe behance network
• ⁃ a blog – WordPress, tumblr, posterous
• ⁃ a shop – Etsy, Folksy, Big Cartel, Society 6
• ⁃ twitter
• ⁃ Facebook & linkedIn (although I’ve never quite got the hang of these)

The bonus is that they all have social networks as an integral part of their functionality. Before it would take time and effort to build an online audience and now it leaves you with time to focus on getting your work out there and become part of your own tailored scene or peer group. It feels as if it’s changed from

You > publishing > the world

to:

You > friends, acquaintances, people in the same or similar fields, clients, people you admire + your world

So your site becomes a single launch off point to bring all these elements together, it’s easily updatable and you can change it whenever it suits, while the bulk of your assets remain elsewhere. You never really have a redesign as such as you’re basically organising existing elements. People can also choose how to view your content via the format that suits them.

Using this approach for commercial clients becomes interesting. I talked one of my clients into starting a Facebook account to let people know of events and what’s going on including videos and photos. Within two months they became part of a network that has grown to a huge success- providing a much more effective way for letting people know what’s happening than a news section or e-newsletters ever did. (I always felt that people never really liked e-newsletters). Many museums and Art Galleries are making great use of flickr to host a selection of artefacts and companies such as the BBC and Scottish Ballet have created Youtube channels to showcase their videos.

It feels like a basic shift to be who you are online as to how you are in life. The need to have endless pages describing what you do and who you are become redundant and allows commercial sites to be focussed on what they do by actually doing it.

As a result web design becomes more open and less rigid in structure. Instapaper and Flipboard look like they’re heading in this direction by-

• ⁃ Displaying content in a specialised stream (like RSS feeders but easier friendlier and better designed)
• ⁃ Have the option to display good size photo/illustrations and videos. The benefit of this will be more commissions for illustrators, photographers for online work. At the moment web pictures are just so small, the joy of decent sized photographs are well served by Boston’s Big Picture.
• ⁃ More emphasis on single page design and the freedom this allows, gregorywood.co.uk is a great example of this.
• ⁃ Loosening up of the grid, allow design to breath, a focus on larger formats i.e. tablets like iPad or small screens on smart phones
• ⁃ Choosing how to view content
• ⁃ Integrated feedback i.e. comments, ‘like’ buttons, share…
• ⁃ Ease of use and implementation, web design shouldn’t be difficult

Any thoughts on what our roles might be in the future? I’ve found these elements easy to implement for our own personal sites but some clients still want a big web build as it’s become a standard. How will we change our clients perception of what’s possible and is it a realistic business model? I think that it’s difficult to charge for services which are free and readily available.

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Find out more about Wil Freeborn here.