Rationale Questions

I chose this layout after careful investigations into several different “Professional” bands websites layout. Overall, I consider this to be a combination of my inspiration and my own design ideas. It has a generic feel about it; the layout could work for various genres of music. However, it was inspired by indie/alternative/rock websites because the band that I am producing this for fit this genre.

             Most of the pages I looked at all had a top banner; a banner which included the name of the artist and links to the pages on that website. It almost appeared to be the website standard. However that’s where the standard design ended. I wanted to include a social section as that is the way most musicians communicate with there fans in this modern age. Many of the texts that I examined actually followed this idea too because I feel if they did not do this they would loose some of there audience who use social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, to find out about gigs by there favourite band/musician. An image section was included on the home page of many of my inspiration and since I enjoy photography, a section was added to mine. I left the most room for the news section as I considered it to be the most important part of the website. It normally contains the most words as well so this increased space allows for those words to be displayed more easily; the increased space which affect the target audience as they will have to be keen readers to read the contents of the news section.

            The advertisement banner was one of the key aspects of my design. I added it upon seeing that it was almost standard across all my inspirational texts. It seems it adds an additional layer of promotion to the website; to directly advertise via the homepage. It may influence visitors to the website to buy some merchandise; thus providing income for both the band and their management. It also benefits the consumer as they now feel like they support the band by owning a piece of their merchandise/music.

             The colours chosen for this design fit this type of music too. Black and white although on the more mysterious end of this genres colour scheme it will still makes an impact. I took inspiration from the debut album of Joy division which is exclusively black and white. The font styling for both my album and website design will be chosen for readability and not because they look visually eye-catching. I made this decision upon discovering several album sleeves where the font was so visually obscure I couldn’t understand what it said. A font like “Arial” or “Calibri” fit this description. These design elements will mean that my target audience will be very similar to myself; open minded, late teens and who consider the modern ways to the wrong way. I say this as most of the bands design for albums and merchandise will be back dated to the late 70’s punk DIY aesthetic.

            The styling of my website is very dark and almost gothic in a way. The look reflects the bands aesthetic and music. If this didn’t match the band would be trying to target the wrong market which would be counter marketing. This wouldn’t be good for the band or anyone related to them.