Website Question Research

In order to gain a selection of answers from people who have looked at artists' websites before, I posted a question on YahooAnswers to get my desired response.

My question 'What makes a good website for an artist or band?'. I posted the question as 'open' meaning that anybody could see and answer it. This would give me a wider range of answers.


Waiting 3 days after posting the question, I then gathered the responses I received and made note of the most popular suggestions. These were:

• an interesting but brief band biography
• members of the band and what they play
• access to play music on the site
• neat presentation
• dates showing the band/artists' next shows or tours
• a link to the artists' store
• a contact page. where members of the industry or fans can contact the artist
• easy to navigate
• consistent colour scheme
• links to Youtube, Facebook, Twitter etc

Now that I have what the general public consider to be features which make a successful band or artist website, I can ensure that when I come to design and assemble my own website for my band I can refer back to this list and include as many as I can.

Analysis of good and bad websites

Before creating our own website we looked at other bands with a similar target audience to Snow Patrol therefore we looked at Radiohead and Coldplay as they are both from the indie genre. I looked at the features that i previously researched in " what makes a good website" and applied it to these websites. I thought the Radiohead website was very effective in selling the band and presenting information clearly for the audience, i will use some of these techniques when creating ours. However i thought the Cold Play website was not as clear with its design.
Cold Play website analysis

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Radiohead Website Analysis

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What makes a good website?

ACCESSIBILITY

Your site must be accessible in all browsers, not just Internet Explorer most people use Explorer but if you only make your website accessible to this you might be losing 30% of your audience. A good designer tests your website on all the browsers they can get their hands on – Explorer 4, 5, and 6, Netscape, Firefox, Gecko and Galleon, Safari, Opera, Explorer on a Mac – and makes sure that it looks right and does everything it should.

GRAPHICS

If a picture is too big in file size it will take a long time to load and drain your visitors’ resources, not to mention their patience.

Waiting for a picture to download and seeing one line at a time appear in front of us is very tedious and dull.If a picture is too small in file size it will look grainy and cheap. A bad designer will take a picture as is and just put it on your site. A good web designer will use all the tricks they can to get the best payoff between quick pictures and pictures that look good for example editing.

EASY READING

The best websites are clean, elegant and easy to use. A first-time visitor knows exactly where to find anything they want. If they can’t, you may as well not have bothered putting it there.

A bad web designer thinks they have to choose between navigation and being “artistic.” That is certainly no excuse and a good web designer is completely able to deliver both at once.

SECURITY

Beware of web design companies who think that if it looks good on top that’s enough. If you are taking credit card details or even contact details then you need to make sure that no one else can read them. This is something a lot of clients take for granted but a terrifying number of cowboy operators send passwords, credit details and personal information in a clear, easy-to-read format, across the web for everyone to see.

If you collect data about people (even just contact details) you should have a privacy policy to explain what you do with that data.

Your web server should be secure.

AIM AND POINT

This is so obvious and yet so many sites completely overlook it or fail to tell you what they’re for. Why do you have a website? What is your website supposed to achieve?

Here are some good reasons to have a website:

• To sell my products to new people
• To offer an information resource and position myself as an expert in my field
• To offer a free report or e-book to introduce my company and gather names of prospects
• To give people I meet in the real world a place to book or buy what it is I sell

Here are some bad reasons to have a website:

• Because everyone else has one
• Because I want to be able to see pictures of our business
• Build “brand” awareness

Notice that all of the good reasons do something, and most of them do something for other people. The bad reasons are passive and have nothing to do with your customers or possible customers.

THE DESIGN

Keeping the design simple is important. Web users have short attention spans.

If the website does not immediately attract your customer and tell them what they want, they will move on in frustration.Simplicity is key. Provide room to breathe; make room for white space on the page through a combination of imaginative layout and typography.Distractions on the page should be avoided. A home page that takes time to load and then has no information except a clever graphic, is time wasted.A website should be simple to navigate, easy to understand and above all, intuitive.

COLOURS

The colours of the website should be appealing to the audience eye, they should complement the imagery and typography used so all are clear and accessible for the consumers. For example white typography on a black background contrast greatly and would be made very clear. Adding to this a good designer would use a relevant colour to the aim and purpose of the website for example a children's television programme site would have bright, primary colours yellow, blue or green. A heavy metal rock band would have dark colours black, grey, brown to relate to the mood of their songs.

Final Digipak Design

After our research into Digipak's and Album Covers we used all the conventions of successful Snow Patrol covers to come up with our design to suit our music video.

Colours
The colour scheme we chose was quite fair but warming colours like in the other Snow Patrol covers. We used a browny, beige background because a common theme we saw were darker colours in the other album covers. This therefore portrays the theme of the song deep emotions. This was done using IPhoto on the Apple Mac changing the contrast, brightness and saturation.

Imagery

We used the images of a horse and a girl because they are a main part of our music video. We did not want the male gaze theory to but a factor in our album cover therefore we used. The horse which is symbolic for the women in the relationship as it represents beauty rather than sexuality which is what we deliberately wanted to avoid. A the pictures are an important factor in our music video, we chose to display two variations of the same theme, on the front and back of the digipak cover. As on the website we used the same theme on all three of the platforms to reiterate a connection between all three of our media products.

Font

We decided to follow the same theme as the previous Snow Patrol Album Covers with the typography with a relatively small size as we wanted the main focus to be on the imagery of the female and horse. We placed it not directly in the center to gain most attention however just off to the left so it is still noticeable. We contrasted the colours with the background so it is clear and accessible for the consumers we used darker colours black and grey against the lighter background we created. Adding to this, the actual font we used was not too "fancy" and "creative" however just simple therefore looking professional and easy to the eye for consumers to read.

Album Cover Initial Ideas

We firstly decided to put together a mood board to help us to discover common themes and ideas frim the groups thoughts. and then to develop any that appeared worthwhile.

The pictures of the mood board we created, left, were labelled A to E. This then made it easier to analyse and discuss each picture and what we could potentially use it for on the album cover.
A = top image
B= top right image
C= bottom right (horse and man)
D= bottom image
E= far left image

Image A - Image 'A' is a good example of a dark, baron landscape which we agreed would act as a good backdrop if merged with other elements from other images. The darkness will be symbolic for negative emotions such as depression which are heavily incorporated within the song we have chosen ('You could be happy') and also matches the 'moody' persona given off by many of Snow patrols songs.


Image B - Again the backdrop for this image gives a depressing feel similar to Image A. However this image contains two horse's silhouettes which adds to the eerie feel of isolation.


Image C- This picture is very different to A and B, and is far more colourful in comparison. The man in red walking a horse through a field is far more 'upbeat' and less depressing. We were considering using elements from imagery like this (e.g man in red and horse) which is colourful and placing it against a dark background to make them stand out. This would then go with the theme that depression and sad emotions will always be there, but humans are resistant. (Good examples of this in snow patrol music is the song , Run - which

Images D and E - A lone wolf is shown on a white background to represent the feeling of isolation which again is another negative emotion put forward by many of the Snow Patrol soundtracks. (you could be happy and Run). Image E again shows a 'Lone Wolf' but he is facing a brightly lit city.

Image F - This is simply a scenic view of a tree on a hill, and has little reason for choosing other than it seems to 'fit' with the style of music

Snow Patrol Album Covers

Before designing our own album cover, i researched the most popular covers from the band "Snow Patrol" and looked for any common differences that made so effective and attractive to stand out in the public eye.

Colour Scheme

What i found out when analyzing the Snow Patrol album covers is that there's a common theme of the colours used. As you can see from the image above, all the colours used a fairly dull lots of blacks, browns, grey, dark blue. They have chosen these in particular because it represents the style of music the band plays for example the songs are fairly soft, slow, dark and depressing and these specific colours instantly when looked at emulate these emotions that the songs portray. Therefore the colour scheme chosen is effective in showing the tone and feelings that Snow Patrols songs to making it extremely relevant.

Imagery

The images on all the Snow Patrol Covers are not of the actual band, they are all concept images with meanings behind them, both simple but effective. When researching the meanings of some of the images they tended to lean towards strong emotions such as "love" "freedom" "loss of loved one" they all had touching meanings that were deep and expressive.

Text

The text in all of the album covers isn't overall big, bold or outstanding the common theme is that the font is relatively small in a more cursive and artistic typography mainly in the colour white contrasting on the dark backgrounds so it is clear and easily accessible to buyers.

Layout

On the whole all the layouts have an image covering the entire front cover this seems to be the main feature of all the album covers or the main subject whether a person or image being centered also. The typography is then the next feature to be drawn attention to however it is relatively small and not directed to stand unlike the image.

Whilst designing our our album cover and digi pack we will take into consideration all the common features "Snow Patrol" used to make their covers effective and make it relevant to their music.

Potential Names for the Band

We chose a different name for the band instead of the original 'Snow Patrol' because viewers who have watched and listened to Snow Patrol will not have a certain expectation as they see the band's name, on the other hand they will have an unbiased opinion of the finished production we have made, obviously Snow Patrol have been very effective in the style they have used where as we wanted to see what we came up with would be effective.

Names -

1) Hole in the wall
2) The Clergymen
3) The untamed
4) The Pigmy's
5) Requiem
6) Sphinx
7) The Wookies
8) Ignite

All the above were chosen largely based on there abstract nature which follows a theme used by many indie/rock bands. For example the indie band The Wombats is a good example of the application of this abstract naming process.

We highlighted in red the main considerations we may use out of the 8 band names.


We finally decided on the name IGNITE. The reasoning behind this is that it contrasts heavily against the mood the band emits to its audiences. The word ignite means to set alight, and is closely linked to the idea of fire, which of course is bright and warm. Fire is often used as a symbol for energy, happiness, passion and hope. This is why we decided on the name as it brings out much of the implied meaning in the bands songs and highlights sometimes hard to see messages through the grey, dark imagery used. Also the word Ignite, flows well when said and has a rounded sound, making it appealing to consumers. Not only this, but the short, polysyllabic word is easy to remember making it easy to be accessed.