Incognito -DETAIL by book cover illustrator Duncan Long

One of the more important parts of being an illustrator is displaying your work (and hopefully enticing someone to buy it). When it comes to displaying artwork at web sites, things aren’t quite as clear cut as they might seem.

Sadly there are many beautiful sites on the web that are plagued by problems that often occur at “designer” sites: Pictures that scale too large for many monitors (causing the picture to be “off to the side” when the home page loads), tiny print, and/or print that’s too close to the background color to show up well in many monitors.

Granted artistic sites are likely to be visited by folks with large, properly adjusted monitors; that’s especially true of the “target audience” of pages like this. Art directors have quality monitors.

Yet how much potential business from, say, self-publishing authors is lost when a potential client lands on a page and has to scroll, decreases the size of graphics, or adjust the contrast of their monitor in order to see the page? How many of these would-be clients just move on rather than take the time to see what’s there?

Of course designing for the lowest common denominator is never good, either. But sometimes the gold standard needs a little tarnish. The page must become a compromise rather than aiming at the latest and greatest tech, perhaps.

These are tough questions — and hopefully this site isn’t one of those that is visited momentarily and then left without a second thought by folks looking for a book cover illustrator.

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When not pondering web design, Duncan Long works as a freelance illustrator for HarperCollins, PS Publishing, Pocket Books, Solomon Press, Ballistic Publishing, American Media, and many other presses and self-publishing authors. You can see more of his work (on pages easily viewed by most visitors) at: DuncanLong.com

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