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.

Merchandise In Metal.

Metal is listened to by millions up on millions of people around the world everyday. Metal and Rock is probably the only genres that create so much merchandise for their fans around the globe. Also for this college project, I will be creating my own band merchandise for my band Skies Are Dawning!

The Start of Merchandise in Metal.

When comes to the start of the metal genre, the most popular bands will definitely be Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple. Then even more popular metal bands followed these such as Motorhead, Judas Priest and Iron Maiden. All of these bands made metal what it is today with their iconic riffs and loud drums and screaming vocals. That's why many people around the world love metal.

The History Of Music Merchandise.

Wearing band merchandise started to come into fashion around the 1960's, which is about fifty years ago. Bands such as The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, The Beach Boys, The Who, Elvis and many more. The Beatles was one of the first bands to actually start merchandise. Everyone loved the Beatles and they wanted to show their love for them.

The Beatles were so popular in the 1960's that selling merchandise didn't prove a difficult task for them. In 1964, a factory in the US helped The Beatles to produce band merchandise. The merchandise included dolls of each bands member, liquorice with the bands name of it and chewing gum with the bands name on it. The band earned millions within months of selling the merchandise, and by selling the merchandise it helped them become more famous around the world.

The Beatles in their early days.

Two more bands come into light when it came to merchandise in the early 1970's; they were AC/DC and KISS. These two bands set the standards for band merchandise. Both of these bands released all kinds of merchandise which would inspire many bands in the future of music.

AC/DC started to create merchandise before KISS did. AC/DC was also one of the first bands to start selling merchandise at their own concerts for fans to buy. The first world tour AC/DC did they started out with more t-shirts than tickets to sell. AC/DC wanted to see all their fans wearing devil horns and t-shirts of themselves. The devil horns where a huge hit with the fans.

Fans wearing devil horns at a AC/DC concert.

When it comes to KISS creating merchandise, they are on a whole different level to The Beatles and AC/DC. When KISS was formed back in 1973 they made an immediate impact on the world of merchandise. They created merchandise such as t-shirts, jackets, jewellery, pinball machines, video and board games, comics and even condoms. KISS have created so many merchandise, they even have their own separate business dedicated to creating KISS merchandise around the world.

Of course through out my college project I want to focus on band merchandise from the music genre metal. I chose metal out of all the other genres for a number of reasons; first, not only do I listen to metal music my life revolves around it too as I am in band myself and second, metal bands have created some amazing merchandise throughout the past 40 years, from t-shirts to hats.

Introduction.

This is our fifth and final college project of year one during my time at Bury College.

Through out this final project, our mission is to look at how fashion has changed over the past one hundred years. Over the past one hundred years many trends have ended and began, whether it's to do with clothing, art or technology.

For my college project I will be studying and analysing band merchandise. I will be studying the specific music genre Metal.

And of course I am a big fan of Metal as a whole. I like bands such as Parkway Drive, Stone Sour, Trivium, Slipknot and many more. I'm also in a metal band myself, Skies Are Dawning!

A Metal Festival - Present Day.

Here is an example of the type of band merchandise I will be focusing on.

I will be looking at band merchandise ranging from t-shirts, hoodies, jackets, hats, cups, key rings, bracelets and many other forms of merchandise.

Through out this project as well I may create my own merchandise for my band, Skies Are Dawning.