Rationale Production Project A

This assignment was a very interesting one in the end. So running through it again I chose to make a site which presented different bands. I only chose four bands being Protest the Hero, Avenged Sevenfold, Maximum the Hormone and Bullet for my Valentine as I didn’t want there to be an excess of bands which made everything get really repetitive. I chose these bands because they are my favourite and i have general knowledge on them. My aim was to give the viewer a taste of the band using relevant material without having to navigate their way through many different links. At first I was going to make an image gallery but I thought that only tells so much about a band. So then I decided to add a biography and try to include videos.
I chose to produce this exhibition through the means of HTML (Hyper-Text Markup Language) and CSS) Cascading Style Sheet. This was done through many different tags e.g. < h1 >, < body >, < div="class" > and combined with the appropriate structure of a linked style sheet, they worked together to structure, position and colour my pages to my desire. I saw it as being more flexible to handle once I figured out how to do it. I understood how CSS was a big part in styling fonts colours and other effects and that div tags are extremely useful to single out certain parts on a page and if it’s repeated on others use the same tag to shorten the amount of work that needs to be done.
I chose this process because it was relevant with most of the lecture content at the time. So I thought I should try and put what I learnt to use. I also wanted to challenge myself because I could only come up with ideas that would look good if I used the HTML process. After finishing the task I achieved my self satisfaction and am happy with my result.

While beginning to create my exhibition I browsed the internet for sites that had done similar to what I was planning. The best site I found was www.lastfm.com, which is a massive music related website. It has got bands, biographies, albums, songs, events, galleries etc... Basically a goldmine for information on musicians. It has news on music events all around the world and caters many genres and styles of music. It also has a huge list of bands that shows what bands they are similar to and if they are currently on tour or not. It also takes the music you have been listening to on your computer or iPod and uses that information to find other things and bands your may be interested in. Quite an impressive sight in my opinion.

After analysing lastfm I thought about what conventions I should follow or should I create something that would be more appropriate with the amount of information I am sharing. I only chose to present four bands, not all the bands of the world. In the instructions on our task it said 'consider how your subject can be made best available to the viewer'. I took this statement mostly to heart and decided to make my site as appealing to the eye as I could make it whilst being straightforward and very easy to navigate. As my exhibition was only small in the grand scheme of what official websites have created, I decided lay out the page with all the content on it instead of creating more links in a sidebar such as photo gallery, videos, events, tracks, news, groups etc.

For the layout of the pages I planned them in a certain way. The main page has four titles of each band as the main links to their respected pages and surrounded on the edges images of the bands. I decided the title was to be ‘Metal Zone’ because each of the bands can be classified in the metal genre. I linked a wallpaper as my background that looked the most metal and still let the text be readable.
In each of the band pages I gave a band picture like most sites and lastfm does at the top and beside I stated the band members. Then I wrote a brief biography next to the main image and under that a few more images. I chose this approach instead of a full page as a gallery to make it more to the point and to keep the viewer interested. Under the pictures I listed the bands achievements and albums. Also to finish the page I added two music videos. In putting all this in one page I balanced it all so there was not too much of one medium. There was not too much writing or too many pictures or too many videos. So it was what I wanted. A taste of the band in text, image and video format. At the very bottom I made links linking back to the main page or alternatively directly to the other band pages.

As I was thinking about networking between sites I decided to add on each band page a link to their actual official band page as well as MySpace page. This is in case people become interested and want to search the band more thoroughly. Doing this now gives the viewer access to find out all the things I couldn’t put up on my site like news and upcoming gigs. I also added my own blog as a link as it is another thing created by me and is relevant as it discusses my progress in making the exhibition.

I see my exhibition as different to others because I wanted to keep a uncomplicated and attractive approach. I thought about what was necessary and what was not. If my page was much larger and I had lots of contents and more bands I would change many things to make it more accessible to that by side bars but for this it was not needed. If I created separate pages for only a few pictures it would have looked incomplete and bland. Mine is different because it has a more personal feel and approach but in no way claiming superiority over other bands.