R+P Post 11: Artist websites that inspired and influenced my ideas

THE MOST INFLUENTIAL WEBSITES:

Alvvays Official Website

The homepage for Alvvays's website.

My group and I were heavily influence by this websites because the aesthetic and branding is very strong, and it is well linked to the social media that will reach and appeal to the target audience.

The aesthetic - a creative, hand-drawn cartoon is the focal image on the homepage, with a hand-drawn background of a simple polka dot pattern. This really effectively connotes the fun, almost childish music of this band, and really appeals to their audience using pop and pastel colours.
Their target audience - young people aged 12+, generally skewed towards girls. A secondary, more niche audience of avid music and indie pop fans.

The social media links - when you scroll down from the main focal image, the main content comes up, and it consists of blog posts from the band's Tumblr blog. This is a social media outlet that reaches their niche audience well, and the posts consist of drawings (similar to the focal image on the website homepage),  tour dates, album promos, and other related posts such as references to music films like"Wee Are The Best", an indie film their target audience are likely to have seen.


Best Coast Official Website

The start page for Best Coast's website (this needs to be exited to access the homepage).

This was a very influential website for our group because it has a promotion of their most recent album on the homepage that the viewer has to exit before they can access the full website. This is a really quick and effective technique in forcing the audience to see the promotional offers first, making them more likely to spend their money on merchandise and music. In addition to this, the band's branding is kept synergistic with the rest of the website, as it uses the same background, colour scheme, and band logo.

Other band websites that had a promotional offer on the opening page:
Cvrches Official Website
A L P I N E Official Website (although this is not an additional page, the viewer just needs to scroll down).

Alt-J Official Website

AddAlt-J's website homepage.

A website that heavily influenced our knowledge of band websites was the one for Alt-J. This website showed us that a creative campaign that is entertaining can really engage a wide audience. For example, I have heard of At-J but I don't listen to their music, but I ended up spending half an hour on their website on the game trying to find all of the Easter eggs and references to their songs. This website effectively reaches their audience and general procrastinators, which includes almost everyone, so has a fantastic appeal to a wide range of people.