Final band website

Hi everyone, so my group and I have now finished our band website. Here is the link to the finished product:

https://firelightfalcons.wixsite.com/officialwebsite

Updates to our band website:

We have been making developments to our band website for a while, including doing things such as:

changing the backgrounds for most of the pages. We did this because we thought that there were too similar many tree shots, making it look a bit boring. We included some photos that we had taken away from the setting of the music video, while still keeping the nature theme that we are trying to keep within everything we are making.
We changed the font at the top of the page for 'Firelight Falcons' as previously it was quite a bulky font and did not fit very well with the theme that we were trying to keep.
On the 'ABOUT' page, we removed the singular shot of one of the band members and added a group photo and a slideshow underneath (including pictures of all the band members)

We also added another quote (portending that it was fro a magazine) to make it seem more realistic.
We added some buttons at the top of our pages, including 'Account' and 'Help' buttons as we noticed band websites have them in order to buy merchandise but also for obvious help reasons for new comers to the site.
On our 'HOME' and 'MUSIC' pages we added our final front cover to our album playlist.
We changed the 'SHOP' making it look more professional. We changed the lay out of the merchandise and prices, along with the font of the titles. We also added the album to the shop.
We added a 'GALLERY' page, including behind the scene shots of the band members.                                                                                                                                       
We created emails for all the addresses we made up so they actually worked. We then added these to the 'CONTACT' page.                                                                                                                                              
Finally, we added a slideshow on our HOMEPAGE of snapshots from our music video and added our final music video to the 'VIDEOS' page.

Here are some screenshots of our updates:

More rough ideas for our band's CD cover and back

Hi everyone, today Elsie thought that it would be a good idea to add our band members to our CD's front cover (as it is quite common for artists to appear on the front of their albums, as it is a way to promote themselves). In a previous lesson, Tammy bought up the fact of how she liked it when she saw that bands were actually shown on the front cover of their albums. She said that she liked it when they were shown facing the front on the front cover, and then the back of them was shown on the back cover. Therefore, Elsie came up with a rough idea, where on our own CD, the band could be facing forward (although a lot of their faces wouldn't be shown, due to them not really being shown much in our music video). She then though that it would be a good idea to then show the band on the back cover, as if they were facing away. Elsie then went and drew a rough draft of this idea to see how it would look (and she thought that we could incorporate this into our CD by having the band looking upwards towards the falcon (one of our previous ideas we have talked about) on the front cover, and then the band looking at the track list on the back of the CD.

Here is the rough sketch that Elsie drew of this idea:

Updating our social media accounts

After yesterday's filming, Today my group and I decided that we should make sure that we keep our band's social media accounts active (like how real bands would keep fans updated). 

On Twitter, Elsie added a screenshot of some filming that we did on day 2 and I posted some photos that I had took behind the scenes 

Furthermore, Elsie then started to post on our band's Instagram using photos from each filming day.

Here is how it looks:

Updating the music on our band website

Hi everyone, today we decided that it is probably a good idea to name our band's album 'Transylvania', named after the band's single that we are creating a music video for. Today, we also realised that to make our CD more realistic, we would have to add other songs on to it. Therefore, Elsie went and did some research and found the website www.purple-planet.com/ which allows you to use music from other students school projects (so all credit goes to them).

While updating the music on our band website, we added the rough draft of our album cover (however, this will change once we've finished it).

This is what the latest updates look on our band website:

Here is our album, along with the different songs that we are adding on our album.

Music page part 1

Music page part 2

We hope that you liked our updates, thanks a lot for reading...

Second filming schedule / updating info on band website

Hi everyone, so as I have previously mentioned, we decided to film another Wednesday to make sure that we have enough footage when it comes to editing our final music video (we are filming again tomorrow at Tammy's house).  

Here is the second shooting schedule that we made which will help us remember what needs to be done when it comes to filming. This means that we can get everything done that we need to done faster.

Elsie also thought that it would be good to add a bit of information to the 'ABOUT' page on our band website. On this page she wrote a review on our band (as if it was from a magazine) and also just some general information about what the band have been doing (therefore making it more realistic, as though are band is real).

Here is how it looks with the latest updates:

Updating band merchandise / Social Links & Contacts

Hi everyone, so today Elsie went and the new band wristbands that I designed yesterday to our band website, and she also duplicated the 'Buy Now' buttons next to them (so that they all matched and went well with our theme/colour scheme). 

We also decided as a group that we should make the price of the wristbands £2.50 (as usually, smaller pieces of merchandise are cheaper than the clothing, and our band are also a small band) Elsie also made sure to make the 'Price' button the same.

Here is how it looks the update looks on our website:

Elsie then decided that we needed to complete our social bar which is displayed at the top right-hand side of our website. This involved Elsie creating a YouTube channel (another platform to link to our website, and something that we can post our final music video on). She also changed the profile picture on it to our band logo (like we have done for our Twitter, Facebook) and the background of a tree (which also fits with our theme). 

Elsie then created an Instagram account for our band (so that we now have 4 platforms linked to our band website) and did the same thing that we have done with all our social media (same profile band logo, description and with a link to our website if possible). She then linked both of these new platforms to our 'social bar' on our band website.

This is what our new accounts look like for our band (YouTube and Instagram):

Elsie finally then added in things to the 'CONTACTS' page on our band website. On this page, she added some contacts for management, PR and booking. This meant that she had to come up with some fake names and emails (which also then makes our website more like a real band website).

Here is how it looks:

Thanks for reading, I hope that you like all of our new updates.

New wristbands- Band merchandise

Hi everyone, so tonight I thought it would be good to update our wristbands for our bands merchandise line (as we did with some of the clothing). Here is what I came up with. Obviously, I added a falcon iconn on the front of 2 of the wristbands, as well as adding the band name and some of our singles (Tranylsivania) lyrics on 2 of them. On the last one I dicided to draw a simple tree disign (to fit with the theme we have on our website and social media and also the CD design idea we came up with), and with the band name on the back.

I hope that you like our new updates, thanks for reading. 

We are going to add these to the shop on our website tomorrow.

Starting to use our social media and creating more

Hi everyone, tonight my group and I decided that we should start to use our twitter page (to make our band seem more realistic). I added a bio for our band, added our location, and put in a link to our website so as we are more connected, making it easier to get recognised. We also decided to tweet our first 2 times. Here is what I updated with regards to our information and the 2 tweets that we tweeted:

Tonight, we also decided to create a Facebook page (which can also be linked to our band website). We added our band logo as our profile picture and stuck tot he same theme as our Twitter page. We added a 'send email' button onto our page as well as the events that we put on our website (the gigs that we made up for our band). 

Here is a link to the page for our Facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/FirelightFalconsOfficial/

Making a Twitter page for our band

Hi everyone, today my group and I decided to make a twitter page for our band so as we could link it on our band website. 

We decided to put our profile picture as our band logo and set the header as a picture that previously took when she went 'exterior location scouting'. We decided to use a photo where there is some red incorporated in it, so as it fits with the red in our logo. 

Here is the link to the Twitter page that we made:

https://twitter.com/Fl_Falcons

Here is a screen shot of what we have created so far:

Developing merchandise, updates to website & CD inspo

Hi everyone, so today my group and I decided that we should update our merchandise, making it look more professional than what we previously came up with. We thought that it would be a good idea to use the eagle from the band's logo which we made, to show a consistency in the band's design and branding. Elsie also suggested that instead of using cartoon templates of clothing (like we did in our original ideas), we should use plain real clothing to make it more realistic for when people are viewing our website, thus making them more interested. Elsie went and used Google images to find some pieces of clothing and then added our eagle design onto them.

Here is what they ended up looking like:

Elsie then added these to our website and we all decided on pricing the t-shirts at £15 and the jumpers £20 as they are usually higher in price and we are a 'small band'. Elsie then added the buttons 'Price' and 'Buy Now' next to each one and decided on their placing and colouring. She then added two headers saying 'T- Shirts' and 'Jumpers' in a pastel orange as it matched our aesthetic and colour scheme of our website. 

Elsie then updated the 'Home' and 'Gigs' pages with some tour dates and where they would be taking place. We decided that we would choose small gigging places/locations as our band is not fully established but are just starting in their career, therefore, naming smaller places of performing would make more sense than an arena. 

Here our the updates that can be seen to our website:

Finally, while Elsie was checking her Twitter, she came across some artwork of a nature-based piece on animals and had the idea that something like it would fit with our tree theme shown across our website perfectly. This inspired us so we decided that I should draw a version of it but with a falcon. This is another idea that we think we could use this as part of our albums front or back cover.

Here is our inspiration and our version drawn by me:

Here is the piece that Elsie found on Twitter.

And here is the piece that I drew.

We hope that you enjoyed all of our new ideas and updates, thank you for reading.

UPDATE: I then thought of an idea for our CD cover that would incorporate both of our existing ides.  Here is what I came up with, obviously when it is the final design, the grey background on the falcon will be cut out so only the 'tree aesthetic' will be seen.

Starting our band website- Theme and colour scheme

Today my group and I decided that we should start creating our band website on wix.com. We first made sure that we created a new email which included our band's name. This was so as in the web address, it would be more professional and say our band's name within it. The photos that we chose for the background are some extra shots that Elsie took when she went out to take the Exterior location shots.

We decided to tile the photos to links, for example 'ABOUT'-'SHOP'. We did this as it made the pictures more clear and competent for the viewers. However, we decided to keep the 'HOME' and 'CONTACT' backgrounds the same, as they fitted the website nicely as they were (they went along with the theme of our website). Furthermore, for the header design we put our band's name 'Firelight Falcons' and the company's logo. This therefore makes it more direct to the audience members and they can see the bands name and who they are signed to.

Also, we learnt how to embed videos on the website that we started to create, so we decided to change the video link on it to a lyric video for the song that we are making a music video to, as that will be our bands 'single'. For the 'ABOUT' part of our website, we added a picture of Alex however, we decided that we will later probably change the picture so as it looks more formal and professional (the way we want it to look).

Finally, we made changes to the template we used given by the site and decided to get rid of anything unnecessary. Here, we added the 'SHOP' link to the website, so as we can put on photos and sell the merchandise that we have designed previously. We also decided to make changes to the original templates by adding dark and transparent tiles underneath any writing, as we thought that it made it a lot clearer.

Here is the link to our website so far: https://firelightfalcons.wixsite.com/officialwebsite

Here are some snapshots from the website that we are in the process of building:

As you can see, with regards to the colour scheme on our website, for the backgrounds we have gone with different coloured skies (that are subtle) while we have used orange on some of the text and buttons. This therefore fits with the word 'Fire' in our band's name.

Thanks for reading, we will post more on our band website in the future when updates are made.

The development of our band logo:

Today our group completed our band logo which I started by drawing a falcon in Paint (again we got some inspiration from this off of Google images and used a template to get the overall shape of the falcon). 

The reason that we chose to include a falcon as the logos main focus is because as you know, it is a key part of the band name that we chose: 'Firelight Falcons'.

When it came to the colouring that we put into the bird, I first added the natural colours of the bird, but then suggested that we should add oranges, yellows and reds within it, as it fits into the theme of fire (reflecting our bands name and the colour scheme that we have been going with so far.

Here is the complete drawing that I did:

We decided to make it like this as when I first tested out the look of it yesterday, we all said that we liked the look of it (as it looked like a drawn/sketched kind of image).

I then sent this to the rest of my group, and Elsie put her idea onto it, by making it look more like a logo with a red background. She then made this into a circle shape with a yellow outline. 

Here are Elsie's developments:

Finally, we then had to think of the typography that we wanted to put onto our band's logo. To help us get some ideas, Tammy went online and looked for some different fonts, and then sent us ideas of what we could use. Here were some of our options/ones that we were considering:

Choice 1

Choice 2

Choice 3

Choice 4

We all decided that we liked font choice 3 the best (as it fit with our 'drawing style' that we put into the logo, this font fit with this as it looked like writing). Therefore, as we were doing this in paint, Elsie tried to find a font most like what we wanted, and chose Kristen ITC in font size 36. However, then we had to decide on its placement.

Here are all the places we considered putting 'Firelight Falcons' onto our image:
Option 1:

Option 2:

Option 3:


We came to an agreement that we like the look of the placement when the band name was inside the main red circle at the bottom.
 Finally, here is our final logo: