A Level documentation of website making for the band Bloc Party.

1. WEBSITE
IMPLEMENTATION

2. WEBSITE IMPLEMENTATION
I wanted to achieve the
deep red colour that would
be the only colour of the
theme apart from black on
my website. To do this, I
customised the palette
that had been
automatically set up by the
website. By changing the
red to a deeper red, I
managed to change the
colour of certain aspects of
the website. I played
around with the palette
until I was happy with the
mouse-over colour of the
menu.

3. WEBSITE IMPLEMENTATION
I then had to focus on the band’s image
that I had shot during filming. I first
reduced the noise in the hope of
enhancing the quality of the image. this
involved getting the right balance
between the options ‘Strength’, ‘Reduce
Colour Noise’ and ‘Sharpen Details’. I
then removed the unnecessary
background such as the poster and wall.
After that I further enhanced the image
using Picasa
3 Editor.

4. WEBSITE IMPLEMENTATION
Where I originally planned to have an
‘About’ page, I decided that his was
outdated after further research into indie
and indie rock artist websites. Most do
not have an About page anymore, but
rather replace it for a more current
‘News’ page. This is regularly updated
and some are even linked to the artist’s
social networking sites to keep fans up to
date with the artist’s movements.

5. WEBSITE IMPLEMENTATION
I then began linking in social media sites
run by the real Bloc Party to give the
website a more authentic appearance. I
did this by adding one of Wix’s apps from
the app market that would display the
feed of any Twitter or Facebook account I
chose. I linked my website to the real
Bloc Party Twitter and Facebook
accounts. I would have also liked to have
used an Instagram account for the band,
but this would have included images of
the real band members rather than the
people I chose to portray Bloc Party.

6. WEBSITE IMPLEMENTATION
I then began working on my ‘Music’ page. This page
would contain the most popular music from all albums,
sorted by album. A different track would then be
available for free download towards the bottom of the
page. I began first by inserting an ‘Audio
Play Button’ which I then change the design
for. I played around firstly with using the
deep red, however I wanted to keep this a
special colour and thus use it as little as
possible. Finally, I opted for a black
background with a white arrow, which
blends into the background in a way that
makes the black background
unnoticeable. I felt that this
was the most anaesthetically
effective. It was then time to
add the music and the rest of
the tracks.

7. WEBSITE IMPLEMENTATION
I began adding in lyrics to the Lyric
page by copying and pasting the
lyrics to songs on the album I had
constructed. This proved to be a
bit problematic because I had
changed the names of several
songs, and made up names for
non-existent songs. This means
that some songs were not on the
lyrics page. I got around this by
adding a small notice at the
bottom, explaining that the rest of
the lyrics would be posted when
the full album was released.

8. WEBSITE IMPLEMENTATION
I also had to then change the
generic image of the Contact page
to the band image. This was the
only place I used the band image
as most indie rock websites do not
seem to feature the band at all.
This is also the same band image
used on the digipak to show
consistency and corporate identity.
The band is shown little, therefore
by using the same image, they are
more easily recognised by the
audience and thus it can be
established who the band are.
I added producer contact info as this was common place for
indie rock bands. Many indie rock bands also had separate e-
mail addresses for bookings and publicity as they are usually
still only small scale bands who often have a lot more say in
where and who they play for and have the time to see and
potentially answer most e-mails.

9. WEBSITE IMPLEMENTATION
For the video, once again I used one of the apps from the Wix App Market. I wanted to display
videos as a type of gallery to make it more interesting for the viewer and also act as a sort of
timeline for the band. The ideal app for this was TubePress.
I was able to select the size of the video as well as customise
the overall appearance. I was able to make the background
Blend in to the black background of my website and change
The type of button present to switch from video to video.

10. WEBSITE IMPLEMENTATION
I used Windows Movie Maker to cut out the audio of the clip and also put
the black and white effect on. This was then uploaded onto YouTube and
linked into Wix. I checked Autoplay and Loop so that it would play without
any input from the user. I then made an enter
button for the page using Adobe Photoshop
Premiere Elements CS5. This was a simple ENTER
sign that was in the same font as the album cover
for consistency. This I placed carefully so that the
letters would be visible on the light background.
I linked this to the webpage named Home so that
users would be directed to the
correct place when they clicked
enter.

11. WEBSITE IMPLEMENTATION
My last page to edit was the Live page. I used another band’s UK
tour venues to construct a convincing list of venues and dates for
Bloc Party. I then placed a ‘Tickets’ text button next to each line.
This link is linked to Ticketmaster – a well known and trusted ticket
retailer which is widely used by most venues and box officers from
operas to festivals.
I used the Wix rulers to give myself
guidelines and align the text up for each
line perfectly.