Part One - Historical Background
Part Two - Concept and Site Design
With developments in hypermedia and the technology which allowed the transfer of graphics along the Internet, many companies now use graphics to make their sites more pleasing to the eye, which will hopefully discourage potential customers from leaving their site out of boredom. Two kinds of graphics are used on the site -
- scanned images of band photographs, CD and cassette sleeves, magazine covers etc. Having been scanned and translated into computer data, these images are identified by a .gif (graphic interface file) or .jpeg extensions. These files are specially designed for multimedia and Internet transfer in that the data included within the files is small enough to travel comfortably along the Internet without causing too much delay in downloading. There is software available on the Internet which allows these graphic files to be compressed even smaller, such as Web Site Garage's gif lube software.
- object-orientated graphics, designed in graphic editors such as MS Paint as navigational buttons or logos, and then stored as bitmaps - files which store data regarding co-ordinates of design attributes in a graphics file (e.g. lines, colours etc.). Since bitmap files are too large to conveniently include on websites, they have to be converted to files which allow quicker download times, such as .gif or .jpeg files.
Both kinds of graphics can be manipulated digitally in programs such as Paint Shop Pro or Photoshop. This software can clean up fuzzy images or correct mistakes which occurred at the scanning stage. Effects can also be added to the images, such as negative, psychedelic, lamination, wax coating etc. The graphics can also be flipped on their side, inverted, enlarged or shrunk or otherwise manipulated, just like any other computer data.
The images used in this project are mostly band photographs (as with the Diems and Fel Petai sites), promotional photographs (the individual band members of Tystion, and the group photograph of NAR), and sleeve images of products discussed in detail on the site (which are feature on individual band sites, on the New Releases section of the Noticeboard page, and in band interviews taken from magazines).
The site is navigated by a series of images in the form of buttons which appear throughout the site. The main navigational tools are the orange buttons on the left side of the screen on the Index page, which remain throughout any browse through the site regardless of the path taken. Other navigational buttons which are graphics files are those at the top of the Database page, and the tracklisting on the dna interview page.