Promotional Websites

After looking at the theory behind designing a promotional site, I anaylsed various existing sites to see how they used the conventions and features.

Janelle Monae (http://www.jmonae.com/)

(Click to enlarge)

Janelle Monae's site has a lot of images and moving sections. It uses more colours than most websites, particularly black and white, orange, and different shades of pink. These multiple colours help to reflect the complex and varied nature of the music and her style and are extremely eye-catching.

The main page has a simple and stylish logo and a very simple but bold font showing her name. It has easy-to-see links to the different sections of the website, such as music, videos and photos.

All of the important text, like the artist's name and the sections of the site that most people will be looking for, are in a bold, sans serif font, and are white on a dark background. This makes them stand out and makes the website easy to navigate.

The latest and most sought-after updates on Janelle Monae, like her latest releases, new music videos and new projects. These are in a slide show to save space and add some motion to the website.

The website includes a simple player for listening to the artist's songs, making it easy for someone looking at the website to get a feel for what her musical style is and to decide if they are interested in buying it.

I think the website could actually be improved by having a link to buy each song on iTunes while it is playing, since people who are interested might be put off by not knowing where to buy it.


An interesting feature of the website is the prominent 'Sign Up Now' button, which allows fans to automatically be updated via email when the artist has any news. This is very easy to do and helps to build a list of people who are interested and who can be targeted as an audience for the music.


Continuing the theme of allowing fans to easily follow Janelle Monae's progress and remind them about her on a regular basis, the website has a blog of her latest news and apperances, which can be subscribed to using RSS.

The Adjusters (http://www.theadjusters.com/)

The Adjusters' website is extremely simple, without any animations or interactive sections. They use a lot of white space, and some muted reds and blues but no other colours. The website contains all the information needed, but doesn't look very professional because of the blocks of text and the bad design of some aspects, like the font.

The simple banner is, however, very effective. It uses a lot of white space, making it clear and easy to read. There are three different types of font used, making sure that the band name stands out from the rest of the banner. A basic but attractive logo is used to draw the attention of users to the band name and the links. The links do give a fairly clear way to navigate the site, but they are not as intuitive as on Janelle Monae's website.

The main page includes a succinct and interesting summary of the group, although the way it is all in one paragraph and in an unattractive font makes it less effective. There are no colours or images, just black text on a white background.

There is a simple news feed on the site, with the latest update shown on the homepage and the rest on the news page. However, there aren't options to subscribe to the updates by email or RSS, like Janelle Monae's website, so their usefulness is limited.

The bottom of the page has an email address to contact the band and a copyright notice. Although these are not features that make the website more interesting, they are important features to include in any website.

Beirut (http://www.beirutband.com/)

Beirut's site has a seemingly simple design, with all the content fitting onto one page. It has an old-fashioned and artistic feel to it, resembling a framed painting. The colours are all muted or black and white, adding to the old-fashioned feel and reflecting the music - inspired by traditional folk music from around the world.

One of the few splashes of colour is surrounding the band name, making it stand out. The rest of the colour is in the simple, animation that has a hand-drawn or perhaps lino-cut feel. The balloon moves across the 'painting' and the waves move, adding a dynamic feel to it and drawing the attention of anyone browsing the site.

A song from the band's latest album starts playing as soon as the website opens, and can be paused or controlled using the options in the top left. This gives an immediate taste of the music and hooks casual browsers in the first few seconds, but allows the music to be stopped by those who are simply looking for information.

The top edge of the 'painting' also has links to different areas of the site: the same typical sections as other artists' websites. These stand out in contrast to the light sky in the scene and can be clicked to open the desired page. The interesting way that the site works is that each section opens without navigating to a new page. Instead, the content of the frame simply changes, leaving the music playing. This is a clever and effective way of getting around the problem of the music stopping when a link is clicked, and also makes the site stand out as interesting and different.

Web Design

Since one of the possible ancillary tasks was to create a promotional website for a band, I researched web design basics. Some of the things which I will have to make sure I consider are:

• Planning the website before making it

• Designing it with the target audience in mind

• Getting volunteers to test the website before releasing it

• Making sure the navigation is simple and intuitive

• Using simple fonts that every computer will have

• Limiting the amount of images and other media that will increase loading times

• Creating an interesting and eye-catching homepage to grab people's attention

I will also need to consider the conventions of typical promotion websites for artists, and make sure that I only break them knowingly, in order to achieve a particular effect. Including all the information and features that the audience looks for on a band's website will be key, so I am aiming to include Web 2.0 features like links to Myspace, Twitter, YouTube and other social networks.

Other important things to include on the site include:

• A concise artist biography, or 'about' page.

• News about the artist and live performances

• Clips of the music that are playable

• Videos of the artist, including the music video produced in the main task

• Photos of performances, album covers etc.

• Options for buying the music, with links to iTunes, Amazon and other sites.

Goodwin's theory - Intertextuality

Intertextuality was described by John Stewart as "incorporating, raiding and reconstructing". It causes nostalgia in the viewer, making them instantly like and relate to the video, as well as giving new meanings to the ideas taken from other media.

Music videos will often use some form of intertextuality - borrowing ideas from or parodying other media. Some, such as Shania Twain's Man I Feel Like a Woman borrow ideas from other music videos - in this case, Robert Palmer's Addicted to Love.

Others use intertextuality with films, especially narrative-based videos. Many film directors actually started out directing music videos. David Fincher, for example, is now a film director and has directed films like Se7en, but started out by directing Madonna videos.

Madonna herself also used intertextuality in many of her videos. Material Girl, for example, has heavy intertextuality with the film Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. It parodies and takes ideas from the dancing scene in the film and uses very similar costumes and scenes.

Tupac and Dr Dre's California Love also uses intertextuality with films, this time with the Mad Max trilogy. The films were extremely popular because of their unique setting, and the music video borrows heavily from this, creating a dystopian, junk-filled, futuristic desert setting.

Intertextuality can also be with television, like The Beastie Boys' Sabotage, the video for which is a spoof cop show, parodying how overly serious they are. REM's Bad Day also has intertextuality with television, as the whole video looks like the TV news. The presenters all lip-sync the lyrics of the song and the events shown on the news follow the lyrics.

George Michael's Freedom also uses intertextuality, but this time with fashion. The video stars lots of famous models, who will be instantly recognised by most viewers. This helps give the models publicity and add familiarity to the video.

An increasingly common form of intertextuality is with video games. Californication, by The Red Hot Chili Peppers, is an excellent example of this. Most of the video actually looks like a video game in the style of Grand Theft Auto, where the player controls the members of the band. Conventional aspects of video games are mixed with the conventional aspects of music videos and the band's star image motif - their asterisk logo - to draw in their target audience of mainly young men.

Robbie Williams' Let Love Be Your Energy also has intertextuality with video games, because of the 3D animated characters it uses instead of real actors or performers, and the surreal, fantasy narrative and settings it uses.

Goodwin's theory - Types of music video

Andrew Goodwin theorised in his book, Dancing in the Distraction Factory (1992), that there were three main types of music video: performance, narrative and concept.

Performance videos are based around the artist or band performing their song, with the recording dubbed over. This is most common in rock or indie videos, such as Green Day's American Idiot, although it is present in many narrative videos, such as Katy Perry's California Gurls,where the artist sings the lyrics during the narrative.

Narrative videos are based around a story or message, and often use techniques from from films or TV shows. Videos like Taylor Swift's Love Story use narrative, often to tell a story about something close to the artist's heart, in this case someone she liked.

Concept-based videos come up with an interesting or artistic concept and revolve around it. Most videos that use this are mixed with performance or narrative, although OK Go's videos for Here It Goes Again and This Too Shall Pass are purely concept-based.