WEBSITE

 

                                                     http://efrase2314.wix.com/suburbantypo

IMAGE / TEXT / WEBSITE MANIPULATION

Website wish list

Website Designing

Currently one of my biggest dilemma's is working out how to structure my text on my website. As Wix has an extremely limited font range, I have had to scour the internet for text types which fit my demographic, then edit them online, print screen, crop & remove the background on each individual image. Therefore when importing them into six aligning them exactly has proven extremely difficult, there are no structural guidelines in which to aid arrangement. Thus for on my 'GIGS' page for example I was unable to make the text (despite extensive time trying) all in line vertically & all the same size - as when you go to change the length v. width percentage even if I make them all exactly the same size, because of the variety of text lengths & alterations made when cropping (after print screening) It wasn't possible to make them perfectly straight!

I am of course aware of this issue, and know that there are many elements of my website 

which I cannot improve on simply because of website limitations & technical difficulties. Furthermore obviously some of the iconography on my site is merely aesthetic with no actual possibility of completing the action they propose, for example when one clicks onto the 'BOOK NOW' button on the 'GIGS' page, the link takes the viewer through to ticket master but they cannot actually 'book' to see 'SuburbanTypo' as they are a constructed band. 

Current Progress on Ancillary Tasks

I am currently working on my website & Digipak. I have decided to use my original idea of having young boys posing as the band when they were younger (in line with the bands ethos / music video 'blast from the past' theme), for the website & inner compartments of my digi-pak, yet for my front & back cover create a more controversial array of imagery to encase the indie-rock lifestyle & musical outlook. My postmodernist approach aimed to play around with meaning of music & the contemporary hedonistic 'rock' scene, by using intertextual imagery, in order to entice a wider audience towards out product. By creating a bricolage of images I wanted to combine a diverse range of contrasting photographs & graphology in order to create a new overall image which could connote 'indie'. 

By placing flowers next to skeletons i aimed to blur the conventions of this genre, I didn't want my audience to be posed with one set idea about 'Suburban Typo's' music & attitudes and wished them to engage with the band & want to read into their story, by creating their own meanings from what those pictures denote to them. I merged high culture - a head of the queen, with popular culture - an edited graphic image of John Lennons eyes, in order to create an incongruous collage which would sell a band which i could make as extreme / famous / alternative as i wished to - being fictional. I aimed for my work to be stylistic & though it draws upon postmodern values & reflects the irony of our music video, at the same time relies upon encasing the indie subculture through the use of semiotics. 

As for my web design i have been experimenting with different typography for most of my working sessions recently, I have found that this feature is the catalyst for success with an adequate band website (as well as all of the conventional features). The site 'Wix' which i have been using to create my website is quite limited in its font choices, which has made the creative elements of this part of the course much harder. I have had to source particular text types i found aesthetically pleasing & cut and paste them, then strip them of a back drop, and upload them separately as images in order to conform to the conventions of indie band sites. For example on the 'Two Door Cinema Club' & 'The Vaccines' websites, they both use emboldened, upper case fonts to create an edgy, hard-hitting, bold image for their bands. Thus i copied this text style onto my site to hope to achieve a similar effect for 'Suburban Typo'. I used this style of font on all on my merchandising products & pages of my website in order to create coherence & use this simple design as a sort of "logo" which can be easily connected to this specific musical genre.

  

Having somebody try out my website a week or so ago has made the navigational choices so much easier, in that when creating the site I have relied upon my own abilities to journey through my personal work & hadn't previously taken into account the difficulties my structure could pose for external users. Thus I have aimed throughout to be aware of spacial features & make my articles as spread out as possible in order to create an easy, effortless website experience. 'The Vaccines' band site uses an all white back drop & Red / black fonts. Their merge of monochromatic imagery & the powerful red really encases the feel of their music & thus i felt it was vital to follow through with similar colour choices. However I did decide not to make all of my images black & white as they did, as I felt it would be a bit predictable and i aimed for my site to be filtered with vibrance & create a festival like, indie feel, which i felt would be very difficult to create with bleak colouring. 

 http://efrase2314.wix.com/suburbantypo = WEBSITE.

Website feedback

I am currently in the process of designing my website & though i am positive on the vibe i want to create through my artwork, graphics & images, i am not 100% certain that my audience will pick up on my motives when looking on the site. Therefore i wanted to test my current work by getting some 15 year old girl's who are really into indie rock music to test out my website and give me audience feedback. All i told them was that it was a site for a fictional band i had created, and from this they noted any likes & dislikes or improvements i could make in terms of navigation & design elements. I of course as the initiator of this site knew how to work my way around it with ease & yet i was unsure if others would be able to use it so effortlessly - though from my feedback they suggested little changes & were extremely positive about the clarity of my work.

Current Work

Presently I am trying to mainly concentrate on my website & building that up based upon The Vaccines web design & research into other artists site's which enticed me. I have completed a photo shoot of x4 young boys posing as the 'young' band & i hope to have an opportunity to photograph some older men as well in order to make my creativity more believable. We are currently aiming to set up a casual evening where we can photograph a group of friends in a natural environment in order to create a warm, indie vibe rather than getting an overly commercialised 'posed' feel from the images. I really need some contemporary shots for the 'group image' page using the lead male from the video in order to forge a connection between my website & work. I have started by looking up tour venues, setting up social networking links & editing images & the typography of my site (Something I viewed important to concentrate upon from the research I did into like-ability features of websites).  I am primarily concentrating upon the ancillary projects even though we still have x2 shoots to do & some editing of the performance pieces for our video. This is because there was unfortunately a robbery (which took place on the weekend of the Saturday the 9th of February) in the Media Department. Our teachers arrived on monday morning to find macs, cameras & cables stolen, which of course was devastating both for them & the media students. We are in the process of ordering all the equipment back on insurance (the macs are on their way & the cameras in the buying stage) so the incident should hopefully (to an extent) resolve itself soon. However of course this will hinder our preparation time & quality of our projects. Left with little computer availability at school & a 'make do and mend' attitude we've tried to concentrate on blogging, digi-paks or websites dependent on our individual needs. After our half term break the production process should hopefully fall into place (after all the new equipment has arrived, been installed & tested). However though we are currently trying our best to carry on, our coursework deadline was this friday and this halt in the development of our piece will really effect overall editing time & video quality, though we are trying to as positive as possible!

                                                

 

Web Design

It has been noted that when users look for information on a webpage that they have a goal or mission in their minds. The thing that makes navigation complicated in relation to Web design is that it can be exceedingly versatile - simple or complex, for example : a few main pages or a multi-level design; one set of content for logged-in users and another for logged-out users; and so forth. Because of this variety  between sites, there are no set conventions for organising the navigation. In all it's about using clever information architecture: “the art of expressing a model or concept of information used in activities that require explicit details of complex systems.” Most websites, (especially those with mass content or key functions), need navigation menus. But as a website expands, guiding users to that content and suitability shouldn’t be the job of just one single menu  All of the sites content doesn’t usually fit in one large menu, and many websites need more than two (all websites have at least two main menus: primary and secondary).

 Secondary navigation is for content that is of secondary interest to the user, information that does not serve the primary goal of the website but that users might still want would go here. For  example in many blogs this would include : “About us,” “Contribute,” “Advertise” etc. After the content has been organised into these two brackets, Card sorting is commonly used to aid information architecture and  help Web designers answer all of their questions even before the design phase even starts. Card sorting in short helps designers organise their sites navigation (especially complex navigation) in the most efficient way possible. Card sorting is used to determine menus and sub-menus, the wording &  their design and structure (either done with an open or closed methodical system). 

COMMON SYSTEM ORGANISATION TYPES

• Most recent to oldest
  Suitable for time-sensitive content.
• Alphabetical
  Great for when the user needs to find something fast. This includes definitions, indexes and other content that users know about before they find it.
• Most popular or most used
  Great for interest-based browsing, rather than content that users need.
• Geographical
  Is certain content irrelevant to certain regions or sub-regions?
• In the order of the process

For websites where a user can have an account & thus be logged in or out, other organisational challenges arise. Some websites may have a simple client area, while others have mass communities of users. When this kind of interaction is involved, user roles and available content will widely vary, and owners may want to highlight specifically tailored content or design the site differently. Thus one has to be very careful when using  dynamic effects for a website design. As sometimes a  simple navigation system is much more user-friendly than an evolved, overly complicated one. The entire likability of the website is dependent upon navigation & thus this is something i must take into careful consideration when planning & working on my own site.

                                     

  http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/04/19/showcase-of-creative-navigation-menus-good-and-bad-examples/ (here is an article discussing good & bad website designs) 

Website navigation menus generally come in the shape of a vertical or horizontal orientation (Horizontal navigation menus display items side by side. Vertical navigation menus stack items on top of each other). Other recent trends include: 3-D Navigation, Speech Balloons, JavaScript Animation, Paging For Primary Navigation (simple clicks between pages), Parallax & scrolling (gives a 3D illusion effect) - (The effect whereby the position or direction of an object appears to differ when viewed from different positions), trail views & added instructions for navigation, storytelling & engagement (keeping the audience enticed), characters, 

          http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/04/19/showcase-of-beautiful-vertical-navigation-designs/  

(a link to an article showcasing Vertical navigation sites)              

In 2006, Oliver Reichenstein wrote 'Web Design is 95% Typography'. Typography can not only guide a viewer along your journey, but it create a personal link, as it is an expression of the person who creatively designed it, something which is extremely key when thinking about a band or artists sight, when your key aim is to market & sell them as a product & also create a level of intimacy with fans. For 99% of all web design , typography and white space is going to be your underlying foundation of the entire site.