Hi Jim,

I find this web site alittle dark and the pictures are too small, can't click to enlarge them. His studio is great. The work is too heavy and industrial for my taste. I'm presently updating my web site and really appreciate seeing what I feel works and what doesn't work. I'm hoping to get my site in order for an upcoming show I will be having this May in N.Y.C. check it out any suggestions.
( yes we haven't put up the contact info as it has changed, and I think my opening page is too dark and heavy also. And the picture of my chair "Oracle" is also too small to appreciate. Thanks for sharing with us.
www.bfdfirehousestudios.us Janet R.

Yes, Altier's site is a dandy on the design end, albeit a bit dark. If our readers are not very technical, this is known as a "Flash" website (a multimedia technology)... it works fine in most modern browsers, but might not in certain older ones. I tend to advise people against making flash-heavy sites, since they are often difficult or impossible for non-technies to make changes/updates to, and thus, tend to cost more overall. As Flash goes, I think this is upper-tier work :)

I checked out the site in the first comment, and it is coming along nicely. Seeing it in this stage might help others understand how progress on static websites goes -- there are a lot of details to tend to when you want to change something small on all the pages. This can be helped by using HTML blocks (not frames, but similar idea), where segments of your design are kept in different files, so the same components are used everywhere they are repeated in the display of the site (every page, or just gallery pages for example).

Newer static web design like CSS allows you to handle certain things much better (text and link styles, etc),
and the natural progression in technology is to dynamic websites, like things made with PHP for example, like Drupal, which might run the ArtMetal and ArtMetalRadio sites :) I'm currently migrating a couple older/90's websites into Drupal for clients, and would be happy to share more of my web experiences & advice here. ArtMetalRadio might be an even better place for that.

cheerio,

ben