Uko Gorter Natural History Illustrations (ukogorter.com) - is an online brochure and resume for the principal, Uko Gorter, a talented artist gifted with the ability to render both detail and essence, a valuable trait when illustrating the natural world. Uko's illustrations are wonderful, especially the whales and dolphins.

Uko's web site is a good example of a site created from just a few basic items without requiring him to go through long preparation process specifically for his web site. It is also an example of how animation can be used tastefully and appropriately without requiring any plug-ins for your browser.

"How is that possible?" you may ask - "What were those 'few basic items'?"

To answer the second question first: those basic items were a short bio, a photo, a collection of illustrations, and a full color postcard designed like a mini poster. In this case, a logo wasn't really necessary to develop a look and feel for branding and marketing.

postcard used for site design inspiration

Normally we like to design the guts of the site before the home page, and let the home page take it's shape accordingly because the interior of a web site is where all the value is. This was an exception because we used the postcard for the inspiration of the home page and then made the interior match. Except for the animation, similar sites can be created to match marketing materials with only a basic budget.

The answer to the first question is that we were able to use existing resources that the business already had developed. We simply tailored the site to use what was available, plus filled in some details via phone and email. Plus the fact that Uko's business is illustrations meant we can use his product directly on his site.

The slide show was fun to create and is a nice feature - each of the slides is animated and includes educational information. The animation is done without Flash® which makes it accessible by more viewers. This method of presentation gives visitors access to a larger sample of Uko's illustrations relative to the amount of time it takes to download the page. Even cable users should appreciate being able to stop and start the animation (ie downloading) quickly and easily. The slide show type presentation is quick to assemble once each of the slides are made.

The playful clients page was added later.