Other Event Sites.... Layout and Navigation Inspiration

Before designing my wireframes I wanted to look at some other event sites for layout and navigation inspiration. Though Reading and Glastonbury provide me with a good basis to add to I wanted to see how other events have designed their sites in order to cross reference.

Source: http://reasons.to/

The Reasons To Be Creative website employs separate but long pages, and whilst the home and speaker pages rely heavily on images there is a great deal of text (I think because theres only 6 separate pages all of the information has been very tightly condensed), this does admittedly fill the space but it also means that theres a lot of visually uninteresting content.The main reasons logo banner remains at the top of each page which ensures the overall continuity. The simple black and white colour scheme keeps everything very clean, only small flashes of colour (pale blue and orange) interrupt the black and white which helps to clarify the various sections and subtitles. As a general rule images occupy the top section of the page before columns of text are introduced. The text itself has been carefully divided into columns which means that its more readable (something that I plan to consider in order to make my event site usable). Although it's not perfect Reasons To Be Creative manages and divides a lot of content and it has a well balanced layout and easy to use navigation and I particularly like  the speakers splash page which looks really well ordered and visually interesting. 

Source: http://www.offf.ws/#/

The Offf site utilises a long one page layout- the top navigation scrolls down to each section, sections that are heavily reliant on images. Each of the headings/subheadings are emphasised by different coloured backgrounds which adds some additional points of interest to the clean black and white colour scheme. Black and white seems to be a common denominator in a lot of the sites that I have previously researched  (I think it's because it allows for clean professional design that can be made visually individual through the introduction of additional colour). Though I like the one scroll page layout - the splash sections with the artists images look very cramped-so If I decided to use a scrolling page then I would have to very careful with the amount of content included.

Source:http: //ymuno.com/en/lineup

I love the overall styling of the YMUNO site (a Welsh festival)- its professional and clean (again a black and white colour scheme) but the fonts used along with the bold images and overall layout gives the site a quirky and individual almost folky country esc theme. I like how images segment small sections of text everything has a nice amount of breathing room and they have also employed a parallax (on the home page- which is a long scroll) on parts of the background which integrates some nice textural photographical elements- breaking up the off white block background which also simultaneously generates a striped effect. It uses separate pages but it works because aside from the home page they aren't very long and the content is easy to read.

Information Architecture/ Flow Diagrams

As I understand it information architecture is a way to organise the navigation and content of a website (this is needed to ensure overall usability) and it is important to note that content must be arranged in a way that makes it easy for users to find what they are looking for. I have done a lot of research into various event sites but I felt it was a good idea to go back and look at some of the bigger festival websites whilst focusing specifically on how these sites have managed and ordered content.

 Source:http://www.glastonburyfestivals.co.uk/

 Source:http://www.readingfestival.com/

Both Glastonbury and Reading are big popular music festivals (so it can be assumed that due to their size and popularity that they have been organised in a way that is the most usable). 

Glastonbury's site has separated out their content into what forms their main headings, these very simple and straightforward titles lead to one page- this page may have additional side bar navigation with links to other pages but its main navigation is literally what you can see at the top of the page (its also a sticky nav bar which means that even when the pages are slightly longer its still easy to navigate to another section).

Reading's site works in a very similar manner (I would say that it has probably been organised a bit better than Glastonbury's but only because it has more content on it). Its main navigation matches Glastonbury's in terms of order (something I should consider as a template for mine) but it differs on the lineup page- it has a splash page with all the bands/musicians on and then when you click on that bands name it takes you to another page with more information- since my event is a one stage 2 day event (with between 8 and 10 bands) I think it would be good to have the lineup link to the external band pages - or at least link their websites to my site somehow (not least because this will help better optimise it).

Source:http://www.offf.ws/#/

I did have a brief look at a design festivals navigation and layout - just to cross reference - but I didn't find it as helpful because it had much smaller categories and segments than what a music festival event page will need. So I plan on mostly referring to the Glastonbury and Reading pages when I need to check my content organisation.

I made a few initial flow diagrams in my sketchbook - but I kept getting confused and wanting to move things so I instead made up a diagram in illustrator. 

The top line is just a list of everything I need to include and plan to put on the individual pages (not as separate pages as actual content). I mostly copied my main heading navigation order from Glastonbury and Reading so I know that it has been arranged in order to ensure ease of use.

The second light pink diagram- is the one that I plan to follow (I created the last one to see if I could condense any of my pages but I think having all my sections as a part of the main navigation will ensure that my users can find what they are looking for better than condensing them into other sections). According to the brief we have to include a social and blog section - initially I would have liked to put the social media links as icons on main navigation - but I'm going to place them under contact for now just incase I can't find a theme that will let me do that.  I also haven't really thought about what will go on my footer - if I have one- so I'm thinking that the contact section is probably the most interchangeable segment and if I do end up finding a theme that allows me to include a footer then the contact section can be placed on it (I have noticed that a lot of design festivals place contact and social media on their footers).

My Illustrated Logo

I am very happy with my logo design above- I think it looks a lot better with the splashes of colour, I opted to employ a fuchsia pink and electric blue because they are contrasting and are a nice throwback to the 80's era (2 of my main bands began and gained popularity in this decade). I have used a dafont "happy days" font and altered it so it links together - changing sizes of individual letters and adding some hand drawn scratchy lines to really cement my overall illustrative brand. I intend to find a web font that looks very similar to this in order to ensure my event sites continuity.

Logo Sketches

I've sketched out some logo ideas for both name ideas- I have kept it relatively simple employing a black and white colour scheme and a silhouette style appearance - I mostly focused on using the piano as my main icon (just because I feel like its a more popular instrument and it has a nicer shape). I used the phrase "exploding piano" to inspire my logo designs.

 

After designing a few I decided that The Long man as a name didn't look as good as the Jess cant get enough so I decided instead to take the Jess name further an develop a logo specifically for that.I tried to link my words together in order to make something more cohesive and visually interesting. I played around with using various shapes throughout but I'm not sure if I plan to include them in the final design.

The design above is the one that I plan to take into software, I plan on experimenting with elements of colour as well which should also help to determine some colour scheme options for my site.

Logo Mood Board Research

Because I am making my own event I am going to have to make my own logo (which will help make my brand and my event more creative). In order to get some inspiration I looked into other event and music festival logos and created a mood board of my favourites below.

Ideally I need to create something relatively simple and striking - something that matches the drawing style of my content artwork and gives the event site its own identity. I have noticed that a lot of the logos I have researched employ black and white designs (the generic colour scheme means that they can be placed on any page without it interfering with the colours of content) so I intend to experiment with black and white designs as well colour. Having said this after looking at my chosen musicians both Depeche Mode and Nick Cave utilise full black and white themes and Paloma Faith uses very dark rich colours on her site so making a black and white logo may also help to relate to my chosen musicians. 

Name Ideas

Before I can design a logo I need to come up with a name for my event. I began by googling synonyms for various phrases that I thought related to my festival. Music and Alternative were the only words that came up with some more interesting variations.

Sources:http://www.thesaurus.com/browse/alternative?s=t

http://www.thesaurus.com/browse/music?s=t

Ideas

None of the phrases above felt very catchy so I turned instead to some of my favourite song names to see if I could make anything interesting out of them.

Depeche Mode songs: 

Just can't get enough- Jess can't get enough - Out of all of the song inspired names I liked the pun I got out of this one the best (since this festival consists of some of my favourite musicians it actually makes sense as an actual name) although I am not sure if its too obscure for an event.

Enjoy the silence- Escape the silence. 

Lyrics

I also played about with my main musicians names and a song lyric to see if I could make something out of them. I don't think any of my attempts really work.

Reach out and touch faith:

LORDE OUT AND TOUCH FAITH 

MODE OUT AND TOUCH CAVE

Names

CAVE

FAITH 

MODE

LORDE

Random Words

Echo

Noise

Depechion

Clash/Riot/Jolt/Break/Discord/Rift/Smash 

A lot of music festivals are named after the place they take place in (Glastonbury, Reading, Isle of man etc)so I also opted to try and find some more interesting names from my home place.

Places

Willingdon- The Long Man (Willingdon - just sounds boring as a name - I wanted to try and find something more specific hence the Long man which is very near to where I live).

White Horse

Cuckoo (for the cuckoo trail)

So far I'm still not set on a name- I'm torn between The Long Man and Jess Can't Get Enough- I plan to design logos for each and then pick the one that I think looks better.

Genre/Theme Ideas

I have already established that there are lots of genres within my event because my acts are so eclectic. However they all share a cool alternative quirky genre and I definitely plan to capitalise on this when branding my event.

I have come up with a few different tag-lines that I plan on integrating into logo as a way to make my event feel more cohesive.

As I've said before all of my musicians  fall into the alternative category (Nick Cave is alternative rock, Depeche Mode alternative pop, Lorde alternative electro and whilst Faith also falls into alternative pop she conforms heavily to a vintage/retro theme). So I opted to play around with these words to see if I could make something out of it and I really like how the tagline below sounds.

ALTERNATIVE . ROCK. POP.  RETRO. ELECTRO

Placed below a logo of my making I think the line above has real potential.

I actually did briefly consider employing a Mods and Rockers theme (mostly because Depeche Mode are hugely modish) and because in my head the event would be set in Brighton (the home of mods and rockers) but I realised that this wouldn't really work because I don't have enough rockers to include as content and more importantly due too the very different genres of music managing my target audience would be chaotic.