bespoke web design
+ development
for artists, curators
+ art galleries
NOTES ON ARTISTS AND GALLERIES
ONLINE PRESENCE
INTRODUCTION
I often meet artists and gallerists who feel unsure about where to start when thinking about their website. The technical side can feel opaque, and many rely only on Instagram because it feels easier and more immediate.
I wanted to put together a few simple notes to clarify how things work, and to share what I’ve learned through designing and building websites for artists and art galleries over the years.
The publication explores the relationship between social media and dedicated artists or galleries websites, the essentials of domains, hosting and platforms, and the role of tone, rhythm and space in thoughtful art website design.
It isn’t a manual, but a series of reflections on how to build a digital space that feels calm, enduring, and true to one’s work.
THE BOOK AND THE POSTER
Instagram is fast. It’s about visibility, community, momentum. It’s like a poster on a wall : it announces something, it reaches people, it invites attention.
An art website is slower. It’s where your work lives. It’s the book : structured, quiet, reflective. It allows time, and it holds context.
Both matter. The poster draws someone in, the book lets them stay.
An artist or an art gallery online presence is strongest when these two elements support each other : the immediacy of social media leading toward the calm permanence of your own website space.
UNDERSTANDING THE BASICS
YOUR DOMAIN
Your address. It’s what people type to find you, for example isawabi.com. You usually buy it from a domain provider such as GoDaddy or Cloudflare.
HOSTING
The space where your website lives. The hosting platform stores your website files and makes them accessible online, linking them to your domain. Webflow, Squarespace and WordPress all include hosting in their plans.
EMAIL PROVIDER
Where you manage your professional email, usually linked to your domain. It allows you to use yourname@yourdomain rather than a Gmail address. Google Workspace is a leading professional email provider.
EMAIL MARKETING PLATFORM
A separate tool that lets you send newsletters or exhibition announcements to your audience. Platforms like Mailchimp or Brevo make it easy to design emails and send updates while keeping your list of contacts organised and secure.
CMS (CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM)
The system that lets you update your site without coding, not requiring any tech knowledge. You can add new artworks, exhibitions or texts yourself, simply filling out forms in an editor mode, while keeping a consistent design and without having to modify the structure of your website.
CHOOSING A PLATFORM
SQUARESPACE
An all-in-one platform with clean templates and hosting included. It’s good for simple, small websites. It can be limiting when you want something more tailored or if you have a large amount of content to manage.
WORDPRESS
Powerful and flexible, but requires plugins and regular maintenance. It suits large or complex sites, though it often feels less immediate to design with and more complicated when updating content.
WEBFLOW
Modern, visual, and fully customizable. It allows to design from a blank canvas with full creative freedom and connect each element to a CMS. It can support very large amounts of content while staying highly performant. Ideal for artists and art galleries websites when the goal is beauty and precision without technical upkeep.
FRAMER
Fast and lightweight, with a focus on simplicity. Lovely for personal projects or temporary sites, though less adapted to CMS-driven content.
SHOPIFY
A robust platform built for ecommerce. It’s ideal when online sales play a significant role, and can also complement a main website when integrated thoughtfully.
ARTLOGIC
A platform widely used by galleries for its integrated database and inventory tools. It connects artworks, clients and exhibitions within one system, which can be convenient for managing a collection or programme. It follows a service model : you subscribe rather than own the site, which often means higher ongoing fees instead of a one-time setup cost. It offers a consistent, supported framework with defined structural parameters.
THE ADVANTAGE OF A CMS
A CMS ( Content Management System ) makes your website feel alive, it turns a static page into a living archive.
Instead of sending everything back to a developer, you can quietly update the content of your artist or gallery website yourself and without any technical knowledge : new artworks, exhibitions, events, press releases.
For an art gallery, it means maintaining artist profiles, artworks and exhibitions easily. For an artist, it means keeping an evolving record of your practice without losing the overall coherence of your design.
A well-structured CMS can also connect things together intuitively : for example, when an artwork is featured in an exhibition, it can
appear automatically on both the artworks section and the exhibition pages.
This kind of cross-reference makes navigation feel natural, allowing visitors to move between works, events, and contexts fluidly.
A CMS also makes it possible to add more advanced features, such as private listing pages or tailored extensions like Art_Frame, an artwork recognition tool for art exhibitions.
ON TONE, SPACE AND RHYTHM
A good artist website is not about decoration. It’s about presence.
White space gives rhythm, just like silence gives meaning in music. The interface should never compete with the work, it should frame it gently, leaving space to breathe.
Scrolling online replaces turning pages in a book. The experience should feel calm, paced, and intentional.
A website should also age well. Trends pass, but clarity and balance remain. The best ones feel timeless because they are built around the work, not around a style.
For artists, it can be inspiring to look at how galleries present their artists : not just single images, but works in context. Showing an installation view, a work in situ, a recent exhibition : this gives the visitor a sense of scale, texture, and continuity.
It turns a portfolio into a story.
THE ONLINE SHOP
An online shop can be valuable, but it should serve its purpose carefully.
For accessible price points - editions, small works, or publications - an integrated shop is perfect. It allows easy transactions while
keeping a consistent visual language.
For more elevated works, an elegant enquiry form often feels more appropriate. It preserves the personal relationship that is central to collecting art.
Both approaches can coexist within the same website, as long as they are handled with sensitivity to context and tone.
CLOSING REFLECTION
Each artist and gallery has its own rhythm. The role of a website is not to impose, but to reveal it.
When treated with care, your online presence becomes part of your language : not separate from your work, but an extension of it.
Isabelle Cuisset | isaWabi
