pigeon detectives

I came across a website for the band the pigeon detectives, which i really liked.



I like the way it is unique to most other 'mainstream' websites.

kooks

This is the album cover for another indie band, the 'kooks'.



This is a very interesting picture on the cover for the kooks. It portrays the men as natural, dressed similary and with long hair. There is added curiosity to the picture by the mirror presented in the background revealing the last member of the band that cannot be seen sitting with the others.




Here is a print screen of the website of the kooks' website. As you can see there are two big white spaces in the website. This is where the videos are supposed to go, however as you can see, they are failing. Therefore it does not look effective

other research not yet considered

the kaiser cheifs
after experimenting with a lot of album covers involving single female artist, i have actually decided that i want to broaden my horizons because i found the female artists were almost lacking interest of appeal with just a close up shot of the

Here is an album cover i have searched for by the indie band 'kaiser chiefs'.
i think bands like this with more than one person to position etc on the album cover is much more interesting to look at and similarly may be a better advertisement for people to buy because the picture, photo or design of the cover may look more interesting.
This kaiser chiefs album cover is interesting, I think because of the way the designer has only chosen to show the heads of the member of the band and has made them into a monochrome image which unusual, with a faded yellow background. the album cover is intriguing because one of the members if winking and the one on the far right is holding a mysterious smile leading the buyer into being intrigued into buying tit o the listen to the music.



Here is the kaiser chief's website.
this is very different to the website i have looked at so far, because although this 'screen grab' is unable to portray, in each of the boxes shows moving images of the band actually playing.


I think that this is in fact a very clever technical page because when you hover the mouse over each of the divided portions of video, it produces a link, e.g. band which you can then click into. I think that this is effective, however it may appear slightly too complex for some people to use.

samang

Here is a photograph i liked that i discovered while searching through a website that i came across www.pbase.com holding thousands of different photographs that viewers add.















decided to crop this to exclude the un-nessicery stuff around the edge to pin point the actual photo and make this the focal point. I also decided to 'grey scale' the photograph so that it was in monochrome because i thought it looked more effective this way rather than having random bits of faded colour. I prefer this look because it is simple and successful.
I tryed used various fonts and sizes and i played around moving the text into different postions around the cover. I decided that looked best where you can see, in simple bold, black.

practice album covers

here is my first practice of an album cover. I decided to make it simple and have a portrait of a girl in the style of Leona Lewis's.
The girl reminded me of an indie look, slightly folky and funky. Therefore i decided to keep it simple and put a bold headline of the girl and title of main song underneat. i changed the colours to black and white to blend in with the polychrome photo.
i changed the font to 'Copperplate Gothic' to give it that final indie twist

planning

After looking at websites and album covers for both bands, single female artists and single male artists, i have decided that i would like to design a website and CD cover for a single female, echoing the style of....
After thinking about what model would be best to do this, i have decided upon Jaimee Arthurs.
Here are a mixture of both British and American female singers album covers, to show the difference between them to get an idea of what mine will be like:

research into single artists

as i said eariler, i am going to concentrate on single artists with their websites and their album cover

here is katy perry's latest album cover, now in the charts as number 3



i think that there is a lot of pretty background scenery in this, in a bright, quirky style. the pink colour scheme gives it a 'girly' look. katy has obviously been photoshopped into this scenery. i think the background should have been quite brighter, as she is wearing a sun hat and drinking a cocktail, suggesting that it should be a bright, hot day.

katy perry's website



this is the offical website (www.katyperry.com), although it is the first page which shows the link "enter website", which although may appear pretty pointless, it can force the person to see the advert, for instance her new single 'one of the boys'



this is the actual website; this gives a very 'girly' feminine look, with pink quirky writing, which is animated moving around the screen and there are clearly links at the top, as you can see, font colour baby blue. the words have been altered into a stylized spellings, for instance 'news' to 'newz' and 'pictures' to 'pix' and a section called 'dear diary' which involves a blog of 'kitty purry's events and photos.




leona lewis




here is another single, female artist - Leona Lewis. this album cover is completely different to Katy Perry's, as it is a close up shot of her face, close up of her skin and make up and big hair. the face takes up the whole cover, rather than with Katy Perry's body with a lot of background going on around her.



It is interesting to research different single artists as i can see a great difference in both websites and album cover. Leona Lewis's official website has a much darker colour scheme of browns when comparing to Perry's bright pinks. It has clear links a the top of the page, instantly taking you to whatever section that you are looking for. I like the fact that the website has a music video, automatically playing so the user is able to hear and see one of Leona's singles for free, with the option to mute this if wanted. Unlike many other websites there is a forum which is the sort of thing fans will like as they are able to communicate with other fans etc.
There are many videos uploaded so it is possible to view things like, for instance Leona's interviews, or messages on 'American Idol'. it is also very useful that the same links at the top are also located at the bottom of the screen, which means the user does not have to scroll all the way to the top again to access them.

website research

after researching into several various different bands as soon from snow patrol and coldplay, i have decided to steer away from the band so i can focus on single female artists. however i will have to research into single female artists to find out more about the sort of cd covers and the photos used and if they have websites, what kind of website are they?
i will start with duffy
here is the cd cover from the latest album

Coldplay Website Research

For my project i will be creating a website for either a single artist or a band which i will have also made up myself.
i will be researching into the layout of existing websites and album covers so i can get an idea of the sort of things which i like and think are successful.


Firstly i will research into some bands
coldplay



Likes -
Dislike - 
Links
Band websites
CD covers 
4 websites

4 cd covers

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4cd coversfile:///Users/e10/Desktop/Picture%203.png

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Likes - there are clear links at the top of the page. which is helpful because you are able to find the link you are looking for immediately, be it news, band or photos etc.
Dislike - the writing underneath the links and the title of the webpage seems to be very unorganized with no clear indication of where the posts come from.
Links - the links are clearly presented at the top of the page, easy to see visually and takes you to where they want to go.
Band websites
CD covers - here is one of the CD covers