change in direction.

i started thinking i wanted to market a music teacher as being unconventional and modern. 

at the moment there seems to be a lot of examples of using light and increased shutter speeds in photography to create a ghostly glowing lingering light across the screen. i find this technique interesting. it is also very contemporary and is being used in a lot of mainstream advertising at the moment. 

here are some examples.

BT broadband advert 2010 

Talk talk advert 2010

i then started to look on the internet for inspiring images and i found this one really effective. i think it was done with a sparklers and i just love the energy and electricity in the image.

i then also remebered when i had a go at sing light in a similar technique about 2 years ago. i turned my camera to night time mode and moved some fairy lights about. i think i will draw upon this method to create some new more relevant images to incorporate into a new design. 

good and bad music teacher websites.

although i like do like the style of my website design so far i feel it still maybe a bit predictable and main stream for a music teacher. and i don't want to market my music teacher in this way i want them to tap into a different target audience. and be a exciting and different music teacher.

i found a website here of a music teacher. and i like how the teacher markets himself in a clear and professional way. we can see he is professional and is an active musician as well as a teacher. the main picture of him is of him sitting in a field holding his guitar this gives us an idea of the sort of earthy music he might play.

a good example of a music teacher website.

a bad example of a music teacher website.

i think this is a bad design for a website. it is quite boring and it looks as if not as much time has been invested into the site. i think it would be interesting to create a website to the same quality as the previous example for this music teacher.  

the next thing i am going to look at is creating a profile and client to design my website for. and then depending on there skill and range of instruments they play, i will decided more details whihc will help me figure out a target audience.

i realised that with my last website i had been treating the graphics behind the navigation bar as border with using them graphics, and that is wrong and dose'nt follow the basic codes and conventions of a typical website.

i am also finding that i am getting confused and messing up the HTML and CSS by leaving bits of un needed text in them, and making it harder and more conplicated to read.

therefore i have decided to start again and use this as an experiemt website to really get to grips with the different components and dividers that make up the website in theese particular templates.

here is an image of my test. i kept the colour scheme simple, as to not confuse myself.

here is my second attempt. i origionaly started making the graphics in a brown and natural colour scheme like my collages but, when looking at them, they seemed boring and predictable, everyone seems to associate thooses colours, like browns for brass and wood and aged parchment with music and especially classical music, so i went for more fresher purple shades.

i used the texture off some of the papers in my collages, and thuaught it worked really well, i also used the outline of sheet music grids to help frame the website and draw upon the theeme.

after deciding that i had messed around too much with the HTML almost too much in my previous design, i felt that i could not do any thing else with it, as i was learning i had also left a lot of unnecessary codes in which were confusing me so i decided to take what i had learnt and put it to use more effectively in a simple, clearer website which is here. 

i am especially pleased with the matching header and footer graphics as well as the simple color scheme however i still need to work on the text on the navigation bar and the footer.

today i actually got to grips with HTML and CSS so here are some screen prints of my developments of my webpage. i focused on the header and the top section of the website for now, and i tried to stick to the themes and color schemes that i was looking at earlier. 

above is the basic HTML code, with the CSS not working because i hadn't linked them. 

here is how the website is meant to look when the CSS is linked properly

i eventually managed to link the CSS and HTML using dreamweaver. i then changed my header to a graphic that i made  in Photoshop. 

here is also changed the navigator bar slightly although i feel this needs more work as the color scheme doesn't quite match. 

here is an idea i had for my header/ and basic layout of my website page. something i really feel drawn to for this website is collage, so i decided to create a few arrangements of collage, some are in my sketch book but here is one of my favourites.

and here are some images and graphics i hope will inspire me, i hope to use those as inspiriting to make my own graphics which i can then use to add layers and texture to my website collage. by either overlaying them in Photo-Shop or by turning them into brushes.

music teacher websites

here are some music websites. it was important to research them i thaught as one of my intial starting points as i need to see what music teachers websites, are like, what and how are the key concepts are set out. 

i looked at five websites that i found on a search engine, as i thaught that this would probaly be the inital way people find a music teacher online, and i found all of the websites to be more plain and baisc than i thaugh. all but one website had white plain back ground, they all had limited use of colour and where graphics were used they were poor quality, standard composition and were set out in a very basic grid.

all websites seemed to follow a grid very clearly and lathough most websites use grids and it is a good way of constructing a website. i find theese websites unintresting and poorly designed as it looks like not much effort has gone into designing them. and as in this modern socity the web is a massive tool in advertising it seems silly not to make the most of it and have a cleverly constructed professionaly looking website. 

one thing i noticed most music teacher websites have is a search engine which then points the sercher in the direction of a teacher in a certain region, which teaches certain instruments and up to certain level. so because of this i think my website should either be a search engine/database, which to me is not something i want to do, or it could be a website for a specific music teacher, whihc may be reallly sucessful or may be decideing to brand and advertise themsleves in a different way to, attract a broader or differnt audience.  

 here are my five examples of music websites.

my website

A screen-cap of my first website. 

and the HTML coding

the second page of my website

this one also has an external link to my blog. 

the HTML is of a very similar structure. 

and the CSS coding which makes both of my ages have the same font, color, ETC. 

Fan Art

some of my favourite websites i like to visit are fanart websites, as i use the images and textures alot.

but as they are made by graphic designers they are all very beautiful to look at as well.

some of the main things i've noticed about theese sorts of websites are that they change and update there styles alot to keep looking fresh and contempoary. theese three do seem to follow the conventions of websites but the grpahics appaear to make the concepts and elements melt and blend into each other.

Dolce and Gabanna

i then looked at Dolce and Gabanna's website. i like how this website has lots of little boxes each displaying and advertising a link to different pages. i think this works as Dolce and Gabanna are a massive company with lots of different branches. 

like most websites it has a headline, there is not much text and it is set out slightly different. i can imagine this website to just be lots of little buttons, each bringing you to another area.

the website however does convey the look of the company, which is slick and high fashion, but is not a controversial as some of there ad campaigns traditionaly are.   

Intresting Websites (newspapers)

here are a few websites that i like to use and find visualy intresting.

one of the main things i have realised about websites is that they are all structualy very similar, although some try and disguise it. They all have key concepts like newspapers. so because of this i decided the first website i will look at will be www.thetimesonline.co.uk.

like a newspaper, it has a header, where the title and logo are, as well as the date and price. then there is a headline, and a caption as well as a picture, then there is a side bar with various links and captions.

at the bottom there are other links and graphics advertising other pages of the website that represent the different sections of the website.

and as it is a well established and popular site there are some adverts as well, ads are a way for the newspaper to make money off the wensites however as newspaper circualtion falls and hits on the websites rise, some newspapers are begining to charge for suscription to their newspaper wensites.