Own Designs - Merchandise.

For my college project, I chose to look band merchandise, in particular t-shirts. However, I wanted to concentrate on the genre metal as a whole.

When it came to creating my own merchandise, I decided to use my own band as a guide. My band is called Skies Are Dawning!

Here is an example of some of the merchandise I created for my band.

For both designs I wanted to include a design on both the front and back of the t-shirt. Whenever I buy a t-shirt of my favourite band, I really like it when they include lyrics from their songs on them, wether it's on the front or the back. They are even more special if they are lyrics from some of my favourite songs by that particular band.

I hope you like the t-shirt designs.

Website Creation.

For this college project, we had to create a website which can be used on the browser. The website didn't have to be special or amazing, but it could have been if I wanted it to. However, I found the program DreamWeaver rather difficult to use. They way you designed and created the website wasn't the most easiest thing in the world. However, I am very new to this kind of software, but I am sure that with enough practice I can become better at it and hopefully create some amazing and creative websites in the near future.

Here is a rough template of what I have created. I have created a total of 6 pages and all of these pages can be accessed using the thumbnails.

Book Review.

Batman Cover to Cover.

Authors - Neil Gaiman, Brad Meltzer, Adam West, Christopher Nolan, Mark Hamill, Jeph Loeb.

Pubishers - DC Comics

Throughout the whole of this book it includes lots of different imagery to do with Batman. It includes images of comics, movies and TV shows. This book is a very simple, easy and big book to read. It is not too busy that you don't know what you are reading on the page. It includes lots of statements and articles from people who have worked around the Batman universe, such as Christopher Nolan (The Director of The Dark Knight Trilogy), Mark Hamill (The Voice of The Joker) and Adam West (Played Batman in the TV Series).

This book is great for those people, like myself, who love the Batman universe. It's for those who would like to know more about the Dark Knight.

Local Websites.

Creative Spark.

Creative Spark is a design company which is based in England, Manchester. They are a popular design company; as they have worked for many clients such as Manchester United, Universal, BBC, Ministry of Sound, SONY and JD. They have also helped create websites and brands for celebrities and athletes such as Peter Kay, Alex Zane and Tom Cleverly.

The Design Process.

Step One - Creative Spark start off by getting to know your business just as much as you. The ask specific questions to the client to get the best out of them so Creative Spark have a better understanding of what is going on.

Step Two - Once they have a full understanding of what is needed from the client, they get to work on generating ideas.

Step Three - Next they will present the client with a overwhelming number of ideas, so the client has their own choice of what path they want the product to go. Sometimes if the ideas isn't what the client is looking for then the process will go back to step two, normally it goes straight to step four.

Step Four - Once the other three steps are done, Creative Spark create the clients product on time and on budget.

My Own Website Design.

This post is to show off some of the work I have created in college. In this college project I needed to design a website on Photoshop which can then be transferred into Dreamweaver; where I hopefully can create a fully functioning website for people to view.

I have created a total of three website pages, here is page one.

Here is page two.

Here is the final page.

I hope you like my website design and I am open to any feed back you may have. :)

Examples of Good and Bad Website Designs.

There are thousands upon thousands, maybe millions, of websites on the internet. Each website on the internet has had some to design the layout and design on the website. However, some website designs are terrible and embarrassing, were as some sites are designs perfectly and brilliantly. This post is to show examples of some of the good and bad websites.

Good Website.

When it comes to creating good website designs, it needs to be simple, quick, well laid out and professional. Some websites still fail to have good designers to design their websites.

Here is an example of a good website design.

This is the official site for the American metal band Stone Sour. As you can see this is a perfect example of a good website design. The design is kept simple, easy and quick throughout the website. Navigating through the site has never been so easy. Everything from images and text is easily noticeable and can be quickly accessed without slow and boring loading times. The website is also very good at not putting to much information or images on the screen for the audience. There is nothing worse that going onto a website an not know what you are doing due to how crowded the website is with information, lucky this website doesn't do this. For fans of Stone Sour, like myself, it is a perfect website to browse. When it comes to music sites for bands or artists, designers tend to shove in a music player which will play the band/artists music in the background. This website doesn't do this, which I think is a massive plus. Having a music player on the website can make the site much slower; this is because the site is too busy trying to load the music player rather than images, text and anything that is on the site.

Bad Website.

When there is good website designs there is also bad ones. Here is a example of a bad website design.

As you can see this website is horrific. This website was actually created to show how bad websites can be on the internet. The creator put everything that makes a website bad, into this website. Everything about this website made me angry, from the background animation to the terrible and annoying music playing constantly in the background, to make it worse it repeats every 10 seconds. The colour scheme is terrible, the theme is terrible, everything about this website is terrible. If you want to have a look at this website for yourself here it is but do remember, it was created for a joke.

http://www.angelfire.com/super/badwebs/

Artist Research.

Pushead.

For my artist research I will be studying Brian Schroeder, a.k.a. Pushead. Pushead is a artist, a record label owner and a writer. He is mainly based within the hardcore punk and heavy metal scene.

Pushead has been known around the world for his skull and bones style of drawing. He puts his own twist on the skulls and bones. Pushead has also worked with many bands designed album covers, posters, artwork and merchandise. He is best known for working with Metallica, Misfits, Dr. Dre and Travis Barker.

Here is an example of the type of work Pushead does.

Pushead's most popular work is with the heavy metal band Metallica. When it comes to Metallica; Pushead has created many different designs of skulls. Most of his designs can be seen on Metallica t-shirts, posters, flags, mugs and key rings. He has created designs for some of Metallica's most popular songs such as One, Damage Inc. and Don't Tread On Me. Here is some examples of Metallica merchandise which features some of Pushead's designs.

Storm Thorgerson.

Storm Thorgerson is a English born graphic designer. He was born on the 28th of February 1944 and he died on the 18th April 2013. Storm was best known for his album cover work with rock and metal bands around the world. He has worked with many bands and artists such as Muse, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Biffy Clyro, Genesis, Europe and Dream Theatre.

Here is some examples of the albums he created whilst he was alive.

Derek Riggs

Derek Riggs is a British born artist who was born on the 13th February 1958. Derek Riggs is best known for his work on Eddie The Head for the world famous heavy metal british band Iron Maiden. If it wasn't for Derek, one of the most famous music mascots around wouldn't exist. Eddie The Head can be seen on anything to do with Iron Maiden. He is on album covers, merchandise, instruments and Eddie The Head has even been created into a full functioning robot which can both interact and play the guitar with the band. Derek has created many different versions of Eddie.

Here is an example of some of Derek Riggs work.