Artland — Discover and buy art online
Artland is a site that allows you to discover art, exhibitions, artists and buy art online. They mostly focus on smaller gallery’s and exhibitionsNow they also have an app. The app makes it possible to use Artland on your phone with ease. I will talk you through some of the details I found while using this app.
1. Log in
First of all, it’s not a must to make an account on the app, it’s just really helpfull to make one because then you get recommendations of artists and art you like. When you make an account you can log in with your Facebook, Google or just your email. Choosing Facebook or Google makes the log in process really fast.
After that you do a little quiz about what you’re looking for on the app. They ask you if you are here for the art, because you want to sell art or because you want to buy art. Then you can choose between artists and galleries you like. This feature is really good because that way the app knows what your interests are and it will only show you those. Without a login you see everything which can be hard to look through and find something you like. What isn’t so convenient is the fact that when you search an artist or gallery that isn’t already on the page and add it to your likes it doesn’t add it’s self to the list. So when I added ‘Van Gogh’ I couldn’t visually see that I added him and I got confused, but when I got to galleries there was indeed a section about ‘Van Gogh’, so that’s something to look into. I did like that it also showed some artists and places from the country I live in, that made it easy to get an overview of which galleries are nearby.
2. The for you page
On the main page, which is called ‘for you’, you find content that is filtered to the things that you liked on the quiz. It’s really useful to see in sections which galleries, artists, art,… you could take a closer look to knowing it will mostly fit your style. Besides that it also shows ongoing exhibitions by artists & galleries your follow. On the bottom you also get to read some news about galleries and artist you’re interested in, I think this is a fun option because that way you can kind of get to know more about the ‘behind the scenes’ or backstories. What is kind of annoying is the fact that at the top it says to finish your setup. When I clicked it it just brought me to the quiz from the log in where I needed to choose all my options again (the previous one i choose were unselected), so between artists and galleries and even why I wanted to use the app (art lover, art collector and art buyer). When i did all this I just brought me back to the For You page with still the message to finish my setup. I don’t really get why it’s there and yes I can just close it, but why put it there in the first place if it has no use?
3. Buying art
The main focus of the app is to buy art so of course I needed to check out this option. You could buy art from the ‘For you’ page, but you can also go to the tab ‘Works for sale’ which lists all the art pieces that you can buy. You can choose if you want to see the latest works or your recommendations. Sadly the recommendations page isn’t so long, could be because of my interests but still. There are also 2 notifications which one of them you can’t close and only accept which is quite annoying.
I didn’t notice it at first but there is also a filter function in the top right corner. The word ‘filter’ is in a light grey color which makes it really hard to notice it. If you click it you can filter by location, price, size and medium, I think these are all good filter options. What’s not so useful is that every time you click on a filter it opens like a new page, an accordion menu would’ve been good as well in my opinion. The ‘done’ button is again in the color grey, which makes it look like you didn’t finish the filter properly. I was waiting for it to turn blue so I knew I was finished or something.
When you click an item it shows you the detail page with all sorts of information, like for example the dimensions, what materials it is made of, … all in a clear tabel. You can contact the gallery immediately and choose between buying the art piece direct, so from the original price, or if you want to make an offer. The difference between the buttons is very clear. The ‘Buy Now’ button is more important than ‘Make Offer’ so that’s the one highlighted the most. Besides that you can also see other artworks from the artist and save the art to one of your bookmarks (this will be discussed later on in the article).
4. Adding art to your bookmarks
If there is any art you like and maybe want to take a look at later on, you can save it with the bookmarks option. You can make different artboards which is very useful if you want keep different styles separated. You can choose if you want the artboard to be private or public. I did find some trouble with this, if I choose my artboard to be private and came back to my profile I couldn’t find the artboard. It’s only when a made a public one I could also see my private artboard (See ‘Bookmarks Bug’ gif). Besides that I do think this is a really useful feature in the app.
As you can see I went to my profile and you couldn’t see any artboards, although I already made a couple, so I clicked make new and I made a ‘Dit is kunst’ artboard. This time I made the artboard public, while the other ones are private. And now I could see all my other artboards as well. I don’t know why it does this.
5. Art Guide
When looking for galleries you can choose the option to look on the map. I think this is a really useful feature, especially when you’re on the go. It visually shows you where the gallery is and gives you some information about the gallery, like what artworks are available, the walking time, for how long the exhibition is available,… . You can even add the gallery to your calender so you know when the gallery exhibition ends.What I did notice is that when you click on a gallery to see the details the circle of that gallery gets a darker color. This darker color isn’t really noticeable, I only saw where the gallery was because it had the extra ‘3D’ circle next to it. Besides that it also takes a while to load in all the galleries. When you zoom in the number decreases which gives you a clear overview of how much galleries are in that area.
6. 3D feature
When looking for a gallery, not only on the map but also the ‘For You’ page, ‘Search’, … you can find galleries that have a 3D logo on it. This means that the exhibition of the gallery is viewable through 3D. Not all galleries have this but I’ve seen quite a lot that have. I tested the one from the map to see how it works. I wanted to screen record the 3D experience but for some reason I always got an error and my video didn’t save, so I will use screenshots. When you open the 3D feature you first get to the ‘outside’ of the gallery (see picture 1) you then go automatically to the view of picture 2. The loading of it is somewhat slow but I think for a 3D experience it is running quite well. The use is also quite easy, you just click on one of the circles on the floor (see picture 2) and you transport to that spot, again it may take a while until you are on the selected spot because of loading. In the 3D experience you can choose between 3 views: the ‘outside’ (picture 1), inside (picture 2) and the floorplan(picture 3). I can see the use of all 3 of them, picture 1 and 3 are more to navigate through the gallery and the inside view is more for the experience.
When you are close to an artwork you can use the measure tape (picture 4) to see how big it is. The use of it is quite easy and they explain it well, the first try might be tricky but once you get the hang of it it’s quite easy. I can see why this feature is useful. If you want to buy an artwork you would like to see how big it will be in, for example your living space, that’s where this could be used. I don’t think it’s necessity tho, because you can also click on a little dot next to the art piece and see the dimensions there. But it’s a fun extra to play around with and it might help the user to visually. That brings me to the next point: the little dot next to the art piece (picture 5). It’s really useful to get a small tag of information so you can directly see the important things about the art piece. If you want to know more you can just click it and it will bring you to the art piece.
Besides the 3D experience being sometimes laggy and slow, I do think this is a helpfull feature and it works great besides that. You just have to have a little bit of patience.
7. Searching new art/artists/galleries/exhibitons/…
When exploring the search function I couldn’t really see any problems, because ofcourse it’s just a search function. It’s nice to see that if you look up, for example an artist, you can see the featured galleries, articles and shows. When you go in detail of an artist you can read its biography and see galleries that feature the artist. What you don’t see unfortunately is some works of the artist, it would’ve been nice to see some works and see the style of the artist.
8. Profile
The profile page, in my opinion, needs some work. First of all there is the bookmarks bug that I explained already. Then there is also the ‘Manage Follows’ button, it shows which artist, galleries and collectors you follow. Remember that quiz I did in the beginning, to log in? All the artist and galleries I selected there aren’t in my follow list. I find this very odd, because I choose them in the beginning as interests, so why not directly follow? I can only see ‘Monet’ who I just followed when I searched him with the search tool. The next thing is if I want to edit my profile. You come on a really clear page of what you can change and even see the selected interests (the styles) from the quiz. But when I want to change an interest and click on it, it doesn’t change directly. I got very confused trying this the first time, I was just pressing interests to see if it changes. I figured out that 1 there is a ‘Save’ button, again I didn’t see this at first because of the grey color, and 2 if you go back after pressing save it does change your interests. It’s frustrating to not seeing it change immediately, especially because when you change your status it does change immediately.
Conclusion
Overall I think this app is really useful for people who are really into art, and then especially into smaller artists. You can really connect with some smaller artists and galleries. I really liked the ‘Art Guide’ feature that really lets you explore where there are galleries. I’m not an art expert myself so I don’t know if it includes everything an artists needs, but from my view it does look like it.