Planet Rock

One of the first projects that we had to do was to create a project from the title - Planet Rock. We were told to be creative, innovative and original with our ideas. It could be anything that we like to do with music, so a band, a website for a band, a record label, a festival, a radio station and so on.

I worked with Amy Sladden for this project and we both decided that we wanted to take pictures of a 'band' and make there website. Unfortunately the name 'Planet Rock' didn't fit in the the image we had created for our band so we chose to make 'Planet Rock' the record label.

We took a couple of lessons to decide want sort of genre we wanted the band to be, the music they would play and how the website would be set out. We liked the 'indie' vibe as it contrasted well with 'Planet Rock' as it wouldn't be heavy mental but the opposite, but in some ways we felt that it reflected and worked well with the calm image of the website that we ended up with.

We chose our models, Ailsa Scott and Mell Sexton, dressed them up how we wanted them to look and went to Alexander Park to take, well over 150, photos. We then chose which ones we liked and edited them slightly as we liked the way they came out in a non professional way, feeling that it linked with the overall image we were looking for. Originally we were just going to chose who had the better pictures to fit the idea and just use them but after looking through them all we thought that they were too good not to use and made them into a band together. Forming 'Induction', the name we gave the band.

 I then looked at several different band websites that fitted into the category that we wanted 'Induction' to slot in too, indie bands like Razorlight, The Kooks, Marina and the Diamonds, Kate Nash and Florence and the Machine. I spend some time looking at how their websites were laid out and what worked in making people   become fans and listen to their music. On most websites where the usual links to different pages like the bands Facebook and Twitter pages, so I made sure I put them on ours. I also put on Island Records, I did this so it was like Planet Rock was owned by Island Records, showing how  big the music industry is, they always have labels linked to labels.

On all band websites there was information about upcoming albums and singles so that fans are kept up to date with what the band is doing. I put these things on the 'front page' of Inductions website a long with lots of pictures, laid out in a interesting manner that reflected the overall image of the band. I then drew pictures and made the lay out eye catching and imaginative so that fans would find it interesting to look at. I also did the usual things you find on the front page of a band website, links to videos, photos, tour dates, shop, news and more.

It took Amy and I some time to get this project to look exactly how we wanted it to look but I feel that it looks very effective and I am happy with it overall. I think if we had more time we would have looked more into making Planet Rock a bigger part of the website.