What is electrofolio?
electro [of or caused by electricity]
folio [a case or folder for loose papers]
Electrofolio started as an online portfolio product, but now you can make any kind image orientated website such a portfolio, gallery, small websites for bars, educational centers etc.
Our content manager allows subscribers to create their own website in order to display their work to the rest of the world. The key feature of electrofolio is that it is customisable, and fully manageable online by the subscriber via an easy to use online interface.
Who is it for?
Electrofolio is for anyone who wants to display an online portfolio containing images and / or words professionally. So if you are an artist, illustrator, photographer, designer, architect, poet, writer, collector, archivist, gallery owner, teacher or student then electrofolio is for you.
How does it work / what does it do?
You sign up by going to www.electrofolio.com.
You will then be guided through the process of creating your own completely unique website. If you want, you can get involved in customising the look of your site in great detail (including choosing the colour scheme, fonts and layout), if not you can go with one of the default templates. You can even set up your website in 2 languages*. You will then be guided through the process of uploading your work to the site, and shown how to organize it into slides, galleries and sets. You may then write an unlimited** amount of information to accompany each piece of work you upload. You will also be able to add general extra webpages to the site, to contain any further information such as your contact details, commercial details, background information, theory etc. You can also customise your written text via our text editor, and add hyperlinks or email links. When you have made changes to your portfolio with the click of a button, the changes will go live. Electrofolio editor makes use of Flash***, which allows smooth transitions between pages and slides, and will enable exciting future additions to the product. We also mirror the sites to an HTML5 equivalent site that looks almost the same, without the fancy effects.
What makes Electrofolio different to (or better than) other portfolio websites?
First and foremost, the major difference between electrofolio and other portfolio sites (especially the free ones) is that electrofolio has been designed for artists or creative professionals who want to display their work in a professional and clean online environment, allowing their work to shine. This means:
• free of other people’s branding where possible (we just put a tiny logo at the bottom of the site).
• free of advertising, free of myspace / youtube style user comments.
• free of enforced commerciality (if you want to sell stuff, that’s up to you, but we don’t assume that)
• free of being lumped into a ‘community’ that generally won’t have anything to do with you, and may cheapen what you do .
We believe most creative people just want a portfolio website to display their work well. That’s what Electrofolio does.
Electrofolio also wants to make it as simple as possible to set up and use. We appreciate that you probably don’t care about the technical side of websites. With electrofolio, each step is supported by animated demonstrations and or help panels. In terms of its set up, it has been designed with the general user in mind, so that anyone ought to be able to use it to create a website, online portfolio.
We also understand that as creative people, you may want quite a lot of control over how your site looks (for example, down to the exact texture, colour or shade of the screen background to complement your work).
Finally, a very important difference between electrofolio and existing portfolio website products is the fact that we have designed it for a multi - lingual world. We (unlike most of our competitors) realise that English is not the only spoken language in the creative world. This has informed our design in several ways:
• You can set up your site to be in any language *
• You can also set up the site in a second language * , and the whole site can then be toggled between the 2 languages on the fly.
• The site set - up help panels will be available in other popular languages as well as English *
• The site has been designed to a folder - like structure, and with the use of intuitive symbols, anyone in the world (with some basic experience of using the internet) ought to be able to navigate through the site and view all the work despite not being able to read any of the text links or written content.
Who is behind electrofolio?
Electrofolio is the joint creation of S. Toop (a British artist/designer who needed a portfolio for himself) and J. Dominguez (a Spanish programmer / designer who needed a portfolio for himself too). We undertook a pilot project for electrofolio: www.smallhumandetail.com,
which showcases the photography of P. MacCabe and the poetry of M. Walls. This initial pilot project has been a crucial part of the design process – in finding out what people want from a portfolio website.
And finally, what is the philosophy of electrofolio?
We recognise that the Internet is an enormously important tool for artists, designers, photographers and writers. If you are one of these people, you need a website. We would like to bring into existence a portfolio website product that is:
• beautifully designed and considered
• really easy to set up and use
• properly customisable
• affordable, yet professional
• truly global via its multi-lingual capabilities and design
• not overtly commercial
We don’t like pushy sales tactics. There will be no advertising or pop-ups. We understand that you can make up your own mind about what you want to spend your money on. And ultimately we believe that a good product is more important than marketing; and that art is more important than money. Well, in most cases ;)
**There will be a file size limit for the site (obviously). Details will be provided in the terms and conditions on release.
*** link to more information about Flash
about Electrofolio: