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Doug Menuez has just redesigned his website, which he created two years ago through LiveBooks. As we all know, website redesigns are incredibly time-consuming, cost money, sap your energy, and make you question why you ever began the process. And for someone like Doug, who has a busy career shooting editorial and advertising, taking on a redesign was an especially big deal. I asked him to send me his thoughts about the experience, as well as to share some of the highlights of the new design. And then he went me one better and also ruminated on the role of a photographer’s website, which some of you may disagree with.
Here’s Doug…
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Every so often, I get the urge to change everything in my life: sell my house, move to a new state, redirect my career, and, of course, update my website—which, in fact, I’ve just finished doing. Last week, we went live with my new site, which features a new gray background and simplified navigation. You can see it here: menuez.com.
What’s the Purpose of a Photographer’s Website?
During this redesign process, I thought a lot about form and function. What’s a website supposed to do? Most people would say, “Get you work.” And that’s about right, but my first instinct is that it’s meant to be my online avatar for who I am as a photographer as represented by a digital version of my portfolio and projects. To me, that means it’s not a purely utilitarian tool for you to zip in and out of, making super-quick judgments about my work, my style, comparing me and segmenting me instantly in the marketplace of zillions of shooters.
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A screenshot of Doug's previous website.
Menuez.com presents viewers with a choice between Doug's Portfolio/Books/Prints and Rights-Managed Stock Photography. When you choose the former, you arrive at a landing page that looks like this.
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I always want my sites to look a bit different, to have an element of discovery and layers. Users can go deeper if they like and be drawn in if they are digging the work. If you like the work and have a desire to commission me to shoot your ad campaign, your documentary film, your royal highnesses’ portrait, well, awesome. But primarily, I need the site to be both about the work yet have a flavor of who I am.
With my previous sites, my first priority wasn’t necessarily speed and ease of use. I want my site to require a bit more investment and time. My philosophy, which I have proven to myself to be correct over and over, is that I’m not going to be for everyone; therefore, my site is not always going to be first and foremost designed for everyone, i.e., based on a template for easy access to whatever is perceived best for “business.”
I just refuse to be locked in a category. I want to be a photographer. I love to work—I love to collaborate and tell stories, capturing moments. And, yes, I love advertising, especially when it’s risky, smart, culturally aware advertising. Then we’re merging art and commerce, and that’s just plain fun.
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A screenshot of an Advertising portfolio in the Commissions section at menuez.com.
A screenshot of the "Dubai" portfolio in the "Projects" section of menuez.com.
The "Info" section.
.
The Nuts and Bolts of My Latest Redesign
In the past, I’ve hired great designers and spent significant sums to create sites that won awards and were included in some prestigious best-of lists, yet never quite satisfied me. So the last time I redid my site, which was two years ago, I looked around and decided to save some money and go with a “custom” site from LiveBooks. It worked out well, and they went way above and beyond to make it all work.
With my new redesign, also through LiveBooks, my primary goal was to go 180 on the white background that I’ve been using for 8 years now, with a secondary goal of improving navigation. I have a ton of stuff on menuez.com, and it’s hard to make 30 years look simple and clean, but I think Ryan Mahar at LiveBooks did an amazing job. He came up with a sans-serif font and very clear menu design, with sub-menus. Once you’re inside a section, you can see a third level of sub-menus above the image area, so you don’t have to go back to the main menu to explore further in a given section.
We went with a neutral dark-gray background, which supports both color and black-and-white images better than all black. (Many of my black-and-white images also have very dark edges and they would bleed into all black, losing the frame edges.) We got rid of the red type from my previous site’s design, which was very cool and fun to try, but it got old for me. (I’m still wrestling with the Flash versus HTML5 thing, and I suspect we’ll be addressing that within the year, as everyone will have to do.)
For collectors, I also wanted to create a new site just for Edition Prints that links off my main site. Also, I’m working on several film projects now and am sharing one work in progress, so I wanted the motion work to look better. That’s now showing through Vimeo, and it’s great looking. Now I have four sites: stock, assignment, edition prints, and my blog. You can get to them all at menuez.com by choosing from the landing-page options. If you have a chance to check them out and want to comment, I’d love to know what you think.
.
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Doug Menuez on the redesign of his website, and why a photographer’s site shouldn’t just be about getting work
.
Doug Menuez has just redesigned his website, which he created two years ago through LiveBooks. As we all know, website redesigns are incredibly time-consuming, cost money, sap your energy, and make you question why you ever began the process. And for someone like Doug, who has a busy career shooting editorial and advertising, taking on a redesign was an especially big deal. I asked him to send me his thoughts about the experience, as well as to share some of the highlights of the new design. And then he went me one better and also ruminated on the role of a photographer’s website, which some of you may disagree with.
Here’s Doug…
.
Every so often, I get the urge to change everything in my life: sell my house, move to a new state, redirect my career, and, of course, update my website—which, in fact, I’ve just finished doing. Last week, we went live with my new site, which features a new gray background and simplified navigation. You can see it here: menuez.com.
What’s the Purpose of a Photographer’s Website?
During this redesign process, I thought a lot about form and function. What’s a website supposed to do? Most people would say, “Get you work.” And that’s about right, but my first instinct is that it’s meant to be my online avatar for who I am as a photographer as represented by a digital version of my portfolio and projects. To me, that means it’s not a purely utilitarian tool for you to zip in and out of, making super-quick judgments about my work, my style, comparing me and segmenting me instantly in the marketplace of zillions of shooters.
.
A screenshot of Doug's previous website.
Menuez.com presents viewers with a choice between Doug's Portfolio/Books/Prints and Rights-Managed Stock Photography. When you choose the former, you arrive at a landing page that looks like this.
.
I always want my sites to look a bit different, to have an element of discovery and layers. Users can go deeper if they like and be drawn in if they are digging the work. If you like the work and have a desire to commission me to shoot your ad campaign, your documentary film, your royal highnesses’ portrait, well, awesome. But primarily, I need the site to be both about the work yet have a flavor of who I am.
With my previous sites, my first priority wasn’t necessarily speed and ease of use. I want my site to require a bit more investment and time. My philosophy, which I have proven to myself to be correct over and over, is that I’m not going to be for everyone; therefore, my site is not always going to be first and foremost designed for everyone, i.e., based on a template for easy access to whatever is perceived best for “business.”
I just refuse to be locked in a category. I want to be a photographer. I love to work—I love to collaborate and tell stories, capturing moments. And, yes, I love advertising, especially when it’s risky, smart, culturally aware advertising. Then we’re merging art and commerce, and that’s just plain fun.
.
A screenshot of an Advertising portfolio in the Commissions section at menuez.com.
A screenshot of the "Dubai" portfolio in the "Projects" section of menuez.com.
The "Info" section.
.
The Nuts and Bolts of My Latest Redesign
In the past, I’ve hired great designers and spent significant sums to create sites that won awards and were included in some prestigious best-of lists, yet never quite satisfied me. So the last time I redid my site, which was two years ago, I looked around and decided to save some money and go with a “custom” site from LiveBooks. It worked out well, and they went way above and beyond to make it all work.
With my new redesign, also through LiveBooks, my primary goal was to go 180 on the white background that I’ve been using for 8 years now, with a secondary goal of improving navigation. I have a ton of stuff on menuez.com, and it’s hard to make 30 years look simple and clean, but I think Ryan Mahar at LiveBooks did an amazing job. He came up with a sans-serif font and very clear menu design, with sub-menus. Once you’re inside a section, you can see a third level of sub-menus above the image area, so you don’t have to go back to the main menu to explore further in a given section.
We went with a neutral dark-gray background, which supports both color and black-and-white images better than all black. (Many of my black-and-white images also have very dark edges and they would bleed into all black, losing the frame edges.) We got rid of the red type from my previous site’s design, which was very cool and fun to try, but it got old for me. (I’m still wrestling with the Flash versus HTML5 thing, and I suspect we’ll be addressing that within the year, as everyone will have to do.)
For collectors, I also wanted to create a new site just for Edition Prints that links off my main site. Also, I’m working on several film projects now and am sharing one work in progress, so I wanted the motion work to look better. That’s now showing through Vimeo, and it’s great looking. Now I have four sites: stock, assignment, edition prints, and my blog. You can get to them all at menuez.com by choosing from the landing-page options. If you have a chance to check them out and want to comment, I’d love to know what you think.
.
.