Website: Blondie

http://www.blondie.net

The Blondie website takes on the form of a noticeboard with an array of leaflets, newsletters and photos pinned up. The largest thing on the page is the Blondie logo, to advertise the brand. Underneath this are news stories which you can scroll through. Blondie is an active band so there is a lot of 'Latest News'. The other things pinned up on the so called notice board all have pictures of the band members, primarily Debbie Harry the lead singer and most memorable of the band. This advertises the band and makes the band memorable as you know what it looks like. All of the 'notices', aside from the news, you are able to click on which takes you to another part of the site. There is also a button that allows you to follow Blondie on twitter. The general aesthetic of the site seems very rock 'n' roll to me and i like the effect with the apparent lighting. The page is lit up with a spotlight coming from off screen. This connotes showbiz and creates a low key atmosphere which is conventional of music videos. The use of a notice board design suggests that the band is busy and therefore popular. The website is fun to uses as the notices are interactive.

On the right is the navigation bar. The font is neat and modern whilst also standing out. There are the symbols for two social media sites; facebook and twitter which allow the site visitors to share their experience and love of the artist. This also creates a very up to date and modern persona for the band, something which may be key for a band formed in the seventies. All the words are of similar length; merchandise has been shortened to merch. This makes it look visually appealing. I think that the navigation bar is probably the most important part of the website as it is always there, therefore it really needs to be visually appealing. The font is also quite big, this is to make it stand out and easy to find. My mum also points out that it may be because some Blondie fans could be quite old and their eyesight might be going. The navigation bar operates independently to the rest of the website as it never moves from the right of the screen, even if you scroll down and the rest of the page moves. I really like this effect as its a lot more interesting to look at, its almost 3D.

As you can see with this image, you can scroll down the website to get to another page, though I'm not sure if this actually counts as another page. Clicking on the link on the nav bar to one of the scroll 'pages' automatically scrolls you to the correct place. This makes the site a lot nicer to use with a good sense of continuity. I would like to have my website like this if possible.

Clicking on 'MAILING LIST' in the nav bar takes you to this site, as you can see here: http://blondie.fanbridge.com, this is a different website, powered by Fanbridge, which may be worth keeping in mind for my own website. Anyhow, this page lets you subscribe to Blondie as either a fan or promoter. I think a subscription option is a convention of these websites.

 This is another non scroll page; the News page. This takes on a blog format of news, like this blog. There are links to social media at the top as well as youtube, which shows you a list of Blondie music videos, themselves adverts for the artist. There are also links to other parts of the website in the 'photos' to the left of the main part of the page.

Also on the news page was this, a.... ummmm.... Twitter thingy. This shows the recent tweets made by Blondie and would encourage any twitter users to follow blondie on twitter. I think this would be a pretty good thing to use on my own website. The tweets themselves are basically news updates.