One of Roundpeg’s first WordPress web design projects was the site we built for my husband’s metal sculpting business. At the time, the site was built on a cutting-edge template, with a photo gallery plugin that tied directly to his Flickr account. Every time he showed someone his portfolio, he was showing off a piece of mine as well.

The problem was, that like many of our clients, he didn’t take the time to update it often. The extra step required to upload photos to Flickr was cumbersome and unnecessary, so most of his newest pieces were not included.

And in the four years since the site was built, WordPress has grown tremendously as a platform, and so have our skills as a web design team. It was time for a major overhaul of AballStudio.com

Andy loved the strong black back background of his original site, so it was easy to narrow the field of possible choices. We selected the Envisioned Theme by Elegant Themes as a foundation, because it combined a strong black top which Andy loved, with a white background for text which improves readability.

I love the expandable photo gallery on the front page. The Elegant Themes control panel allows us to adjust the number of featured images with ease. This theme also includes several different types of galleries. We experimented with several, using the portfolio view for the collection of all his pieces, and the blog view for a more detailed look at individual collections.

The theme also has a nice “photo post” option which allows you to make the featured image a full size image instead of a thumbnail.  It is an ideal way to display some of his more dramatic pieces, like the casting of the sign for the Indianapolis Art Center. 

So check it out, both to see some of my latest work … and his!

ABallStudio