Skeleton is a Creepy Word

It's been really fun working on the website. I don't know if I've mentioned before, but since last year with my Foundation Portfolio I have grown fond of design and now I am falling in love for web design. I have a lot of fun trying things out, changing the background, positioning pictures, creating links, and mostly trying to come up with creative layouts for the pages. It's an adventure each time I log on to Wix, because I never know what I will discover or how it will look like once I'm done. I've talked about my endless dilemma with ONLY the header, so imagine what I go through with the rest of the website... extensive work. I drew a sketch of what I had in mind for the home page, because I find sketching always helpful as brainstorming, especially when it comes to design. I find that once I put pencil on paper stuff just flows out and I can see it as a big picture.

Sorry if pencil is hard to read, I hate sketching in pen.

Basically what I think my home page should look like. I'm trying to keep a "space" theme -I know it sounds lame, but bare with me- to go with the name of the band and the album cover (refer to the link); I have a Saturn drawing, the circles for the news, the starry background, so that the website can act as a marketing product for the album. The more I remind people that this is what it looks like, the more it will STICK. I want it to stick. The right side of the paper is some alternatives for what I drew in the main sketch, in the case that if I transfer it to the website and don't like it, I have a plan B. (Maybe I should come up with a plan C, just in case).

For the home page I mostly followed the format of RHCP's website, regarding the content, while incorporating my own vision for the layout. I also added the documentary video as the first thing one sees when they go on the website, because introducing the band is my #1 goal. The social media links are going to be next to the menu links, but I haven't yet decided if they're going to be in a drop-down menu format (where I have a button that says "social media", you click and stuff ~shows up~) or just links. They are right there at the top with the purpose of getting people directed to their social media; the platforms are the only place where fans engage with the band, and it's important that they do so -my target audience enjoys feeling connected. Which brings me to the bottom: 'site by Wix', to give credit to the software; the logo, as a reminder to the audience -in case they have forgotten after this long journey to the bottom- of what the brand of the band is; social media links, once again, because repetition makes it permanent in one's head and I WANT IT TO STICK.

I have re-acquire my taste for surprises after working on the website so... all you get is a sketch for now. Maybe I'll show some sketches of the other pages. Maybe there will be some sneak peaks soon. Maybe you'll only see it when it's all done.

Guess you'll have to stay tuned to find out...

Cover vs. Cover

Here is a quick post just to show you, dear followers, a dilemma.

VS.

These are the two options we have for the album cover. It technically is not a debate, since Jean paid for the top one and they've decided on it as the cover, but... I like the bottom one waaaaaay more, I think it's way cooler, it embodies the vibe of the band better and honestly, it's more appealing. I asked some of my colleagues and all of them preferred the bottom one. Of course the image needs to be adjusted, since Carlos, who drew it, didn't make that to be a cover. 

In my almost-professional opinion, the bottom option will be more popular with people and more remarkable. It is a design that people can definitely remember and link back to Surfing on Saturn. Plus, it allows for cool merchandise. 

Now I have to find a way to convince Jean to use the second option, but I believe I have some pretty good arguments up my sleeve.

Welcome, InDesign

 I am working intensively on the website this week and have already made some progress; there is a sketch of the home page sitting on my backpack right now, but I will leave that to the next post. This post is dedicated to some fun I am having working with InDesign.

It all started when I started editing the website and saw myself trying to come up with a good header. I thought "it should say the name of the band", and puf, a basic, clean title saying "SURFING ON SATURN" popped up at the top of the website (yes, like magic). It looked good, yet simple, but I didn't saw that as a problem....

Attempt #1

Theeeeeen.... because I am not too simplistic and thought something was missing, I started surfing -ha!- the web for other websites, and found that many use small logos or titles, but nothing as big as what I produced. You can see in previous website examples I posted that the name of the band does not take that much space on the page. Then I tried something else:

Attempt #2

I liked it, especially if I made it wayyy smaller and moved it to the right a tad more (Wix has this weird thing where it starts cutting pictures if you shrink them too much), yet something was slightly wrong. I have to mention that when I began doing this my brother was doing homework right next to me, and when I am working on something I have to be constantly asking him "but what do you think?", "is it good?", "look", "should I change anything?". He gets annoyed but oh well, that's one of the guidelines for being my brother. Usually he just nods or gives short answers, but for this he actually helped. I told him I was worried the first option was too big of a header considering other websites, but he made me realize that these other bands are already famous so they don't have to THROW their name right at people's faces. Impressive, brother. I posed the question to my classmates and mentioned what my brother had said, and they all agreed with him. Also, I felt like just giving "SOS" is not going to make all people remember that this is Surfing on Saturn. Spelling out the name would be a better route.

Back to square one, but at least not making bad decisions. I wanted to stick to the logo because that is their logo and it will be used on albums, social media, merchandise, etc. Having it present on the website is important to remind people that "hey, that's Surfing on Saturn"...which brings me to:

Attempt #3

First time I looked at it I thought it was fine, but then after a while... it wasn't anymore. My friend, Celeste, said that it looked repetitive and weird, to which I completely agreed.

Back to square one once more. I thought of having the name spelled out on the home page, and the logo on every other, but that doesn't create consistency and fixation on people's minds. I tried placing the logo on the sides, but it still looked redundant. Then I tried the footer, but it needs to be visible as soon as people get on the website. That's when my beautiful friend, Isabella, asked "why don't you use the 'O' in the logo and replace it for the 'o' in the header?"

I don't know why, Isa, but yes. Yes.

Attempt #4

It alludes to the logo, which will be present on other elements of the website and the band's platforms in general, and still tells the name to the audience. Of course this is a rough rough draft, since it's CLEAR that the 'O' is way thinner than the rest of the letters and not even the same height, but that's what brings me to InDesign.

I basically just used it to type up the title and add the 'O' from the logo, since the program gives me the ability to adjust the font size, space between the letters, gives me many font options, and I can well manipulate the image of the 'O'. The hard part was finding a font that matched the one in the logo (a task in which dafont.com helped me a lot), but I pushed through it and succeeded ~cheers of joy~.

Final version

Being a Groupie

This is from last Wednesday, when they played at the school's Photography Expo.

Btw, the bass player is a fill in because Carlos and Santi were not available.

Finally, the full instrumental version of Heartbeat. They do have the lyrics, I just haven't heard it yet because we were supposed to get together last week to rehearse but they canceled last minute. I've been finding that it's hard to really create schedules with them, because two of the members have so little free time. Carlos and Santiago play in the school's marching band and they rehearse a LOT, which makes it very hard to set up times that are convenient for all parties involved. As I have mentioned before in a post, what's so different between this year and last year is depending on others; I depend on the band almost 100% -I need the songs, I need their time, I need a setlist, I need approval to do things. Right now, with only two weeks and a half left, this detail is starting to stress me out. My goal for this week is to have the doc video and the website done (with the website maybe only missing some content).

Meanwhile, I can still brainstorm for the music video since I have the melody now. The style of the song reminds me of Pink Floyd A LOT, especially Dark Side of the Moon, and I believe that's where most of my visions for this video I coming from. I was talking to Jean and Rafa during the Expo and they pitched this to me: film the scenes of them playing with a faster tempo and then slow down in post production so it matches the actual tempo. Why? Because then all their movements will be slowed down. We talked about pipes with holes and flowing water through them, we talked about punching a glass panel and filming it breaking. The general agreement is that we're going to sorta follow a "Dark Necessities" route, being mostly promotional and having actors acting (yes, actors act, Lari) but not really following any story line; the amount of actor presence is not yet defined, although I believe we're going to end up keeping it to a minimal. Overall, I see very exaggerated movements, close-ups and extreme close-ups, a lot of lowkey lighting and cool colors, circular pans and tilts to the sky -or roof... I see something sort of psychedelic and disjointed.

I truly like the instrumental version of the song and couldn't be more excited to hear the lyrics (also desperate to hear them). I am actually thinking of pitching the idea to them of having the instrumental version of the song as an extra/bonus track and I'll look more into that when I'm doing the digipak.


P.S. The inside joke is that they need new songs... They always play "Skin and Bones" and "Don't Let Me Down"

Story Time

I am behind schedule. This weekend was pretty chaotic because of some personal issues, so I am behind schedule right now and need to get back on track FAST. I'm pretty worried, not gonna lie, and will probably be posting everyday this week (for everyone's happiness).

After MANY TRIES and failed attempts I set up a channel for the band on YouTube. Uhu. I started creating a new account for Surfing on Saturn and setting up the channel from there. Then the quest to change the icon begun and for SOME GODLY REASON I could not for the life of me change the icon. I have never logged out and on again to an account before (by the way, any rational person would know this is not the solution to making an icon work). So I got nervous mad and anxious and went on a quest through Google. I found some help pages about something called a "brand account", which can be managed by many people and thought "hey, a brand account would be ideal because all the members can have access to it", deleting then the newly created Surfing on Saturn account. Setting up a brand account was twice as hard as changing the channel icon, because every time I typed in "how to create a brand account" on Google, this showed up:

Where is my straight forward answer, Mr. Google?

I clicked the first link and couldn't find a straight forward answer so I got even more nervous and mad and anxious. But I finally settled down and decided to read the page from beginning to end and... voila, YouTube channel. I set it up from my own personal account, which makes me the manager, and can add people to it however I please (power). For now only I will have access to it, to make sure nothing gets confusing and we're not overlapping content, specially because all the content to "introduce" the band is being created right now by me.

Channel art: for now I am using their logo, but I want to change it for a good picture of the four of them. Unfortunately, they cancelled the photo shoot last week so I still don't have any pictures that will fit this purpose. Hoping we will have one this week but... working according to other people's schedules can be tricky sometimes.

Icon: REALLY. HARD. TO. DO. When you click to change the icon this pops up:

At first I calmed down a bit because I hadn't read that the first 1000 times I tried to change the icon, but then a "few minutes" passed and the icon was still NOT SHOWING. It's still not showing. I literally don't know what to do. I guess I'll check tomorrow morning and see what's up.

This is the image I want to use as an icon for now, before I can get a good picture of the band and replace the channel art (then the logo will be the icon).

Custom URL: There are guidelines to be eligible for a custom URL, which are

• Have 100 or more subscribers
• Be at least 30 days old
• Have an uploaded photo as channel icon
• Have uploaded channel art

I'm going to do a mass raid on social media -as soon as the icon uploads- to get people subscribed. I can't control being at least 30 days old, so I'll just have to wait. "Have an uploaded photo as channel icon", I guess I have that? Really wouldn't be able to tell. Last item done. After all those I can change the url to "surfingonsaturn", which is uniform to all their social media and easier for people to find. 

With the basics done I begun to play around with more advanced settings. The first one I noticed was the one in the picture to the right, when I clicked "for new visitors". As you can see, it advises the person managing the page to add a "channel trailer", which would introduce the channel to new visitors. When I saw that I immediately thought of the doc video, since its purpose has already been established as a introduction of the band to the audience. I decided to upload the doc video as a "channel trailer", which I actually am working my best to have by the end of this week.

Following, I added some tags to the channel to make it easier for people to find it. I went crazy and typed everything from "surfing on saturn" to "monkey with a big butt". (Just kidding, I didn't really typed that last one up, I'm not crazy.)

Then I created links, which appear on the header of the channel, to their website, Instagram, and Twitter. That's how I'll keep people connected to all their platforms through each one of their platforms.

Finally, I added two live performances I recorded and their first music video, Skin and Bones.

After all this explanation, click here to check out all I just said it's true.