When it comes to illustration and design, it’s clear that good presentation is everything. You can’t be a good illustrator or a designer and have a sloppy, messy presentation, or, worse yet, no presentation at all.
These days, most illustrators opt for blogs, social media and websites for their presentation. It makes sense that these things have moved online. Presenting your work through a website is definitely more convenient, and it shows that you are skilled with modern technologies and tendencies in design and art in general. A website can be shared with anyone, regardless of the distance. You don’t have to set up a meeting to show someone your work. You simply send them the link to your website, and that’s it.
Still, when it comes to creating a website, many illustrators find themselves somewhat baffled. Oriented more towards the artistic aspect of their work, they feel they’re not skilled enough or up to the challenge of creating a site of their own. It just seems like too much work that they cannot possibly do by themselves. From buying a domain name and taking care of hosting to the most difficult part – building the website, from the ground up, it just seems like too much. For those who have never attempted creating a site, it all sounds too scary to be doable. And that’s why many of designers and illustrators spend years without a website, missing on who knows how many great opportunities.
And that’s where illustration WordPress themes come into play.
The biggest advantage that WordPress has over custom-made websites is the fact it is so cheap and convenient. The platform itself is free, and there are also some themes that are completely free, too. On the other hand, premium ones are still more than affordable, and can come a long way in terms of features and functionalities. So let’s see why every illustrator or designer should consider using one of them.
Design WordPress themes are, above all, superbly designed. Their creators understand very well that any professional in the field of illustration, design and animation needs to have a website that is designed perfectly down to the last pixel. Everything needs to be just right – from header to footer, the layout, sections, all the pages, fonts, images, galleries… everything has to represent a shiny little wheel in a spotless machinery that stuns from the first moment a visitor lands on it.
The design of these themes is balanced and stylistically uniform, whatever the style - be it elegant, minimalistic and light or bold, colorful and hip. The choice is remarkably wide, so any illustrator can find something to fit his or her personal style.
These illustration WordPress themes include different homepages, which users can pick according to their needs. In addition, they come with a selection of inner pages, from blog pages to About Us, Contact Us, Team, Pricing Packages and even custom Error 404 pages. Each of them can be customized according to your liking and your preferences.
In addition, illustrators and designers can enjoy a great selection of innovative, engaging layouts. These are created with two goals – help create engaging and inspiring pages and to make your own content stand out. Your illustrations and designs can be displayed in fullscreen sliders or sections, in beautiful galleries, split screen or skewed sections. As for the navigation, you can put your most important links in an exciting, innovative fullscreen menu that will impress your visitors, or opt for a vertical or side menu. Portfolio WordPress themes offer a remarkable choice when it comes to displaying the images of your work, from various lists (masonry, Pinterest, etc.) to interactive galleries.
Art WordPress themes are also packed with some truly exciting effects that you can use to make your website appear dynamic, modern and professional.
For instance, you can use horizontal scroll so that your page moves sideways when the user scrolls, instead of up and down. Some of the themes even have scroll animations that will delight your visitors, and there are also some neat hover effects that activate when the user moves the cursor to certain parts of the site.
There is, of course, the popular parallax effect that you can use to add depth to your pages, and split sliders in which one side moves up and the other moves down when scrolled.
Of course, if your style is more conservative or retro, you don’t have to use any of these effects at all. The choice is yours, and all effects, just like sections and even entire pages, can easily be turned off.
The most important part of these themes are actually their unique features. We have made sure to include pretty much every function an artist, illustrator or designer could possibly need in a website. There are even some things that you probably didn’t even know you needed. These are all incredibly easy to enable and disable, and you can also configure them according to your needs.
Portfolio WordPress themes allow you to easily display testimonials of your satisfied clients, display your client logos in a neat carousel, present your workflow in a combination of images and text, as well as your work process and your history. Furthermore, you can choose how you want to display your content – whether it’s going to be in a frame slider or perhaps a convenient preview slider, a number of galleries and much more. Of course, some “classic” features are also here, from Google Maps and social buttons to banners, counters and CTAs.