Website Analysis

By Ewa Bryszkiewicz

1. This website is for the artist Macklemore (&Ryan Lewis). He is an up and coming Hip Hop/Indie Rap artist. This is reflected in the style of the website. It looks very cool and original, and very indie. The colors have all been kept simple and classic – the black and white background and the gold lettering make the website look rich and classy as well as giving it an indie and vintage feel.

3. The background is consistent throughout the different pages. It features cool black and white sketches of random things. The sketches all have some sort of a meaning, creating a persona for the artist and reflecting his style/likes/dislikes, and some referring to videos or pictures of the artist, for example the little scooter is featured in the video ‘Thrift shop’. This makes the fan associate these things with the artist.

4. This website is actually hosted on tumbrl, which is a Blog, its similar to twitter in the sense that people can follow people. And as can be seen at the top right of the screenshot there is an option to follow macklemore, this is a good tool for artists because whenever they post something on their blog it automatically is shown on the fans dashboard, where as if the artist had a normal website the fans would not have that much interaction with them, they would look at the website once and go through the things like gallery and info and exit and forget about it. Its also good because it’s a mostly free service . With the only cost is getting their own URL and the design of the page.

2. The first thing the fan/user sees when looking at the front page is an advert for the artist new album, this is useful because it informs the fan of a new product the artist is selling, they might not have know that the album is out or might have forgotten, but this big banner will remind them. I have decided to use this in my website (as can be seen in the screen shot above) and feature the banner/ad on the home page so its also the first thing the user/fan sees.

1. This is the second page of the website, it’s the ‘Photos’ page. Here the fans can submit their pictures of Macklemore and have them featured on the website, this is a useful tool because it brings the audience closer to the product (artist) making him more approachable and consequently more likable and known.The pictures below them are in the official gallery. They all have a certain style, vintage filters and indie settings. Further developing the artists image.

2. As can be seen the advert at the top of the page is gone and is replaced by the normal banner design which features the name of the artists in their iconic font, this artist doesn't’t have a logo that the fans can associate with them so they use a specific type of font that is recognizable and that kind of becomes their logo, an example of this is Katy Perry, the font she uses has become iconic and recognizable for the audience

This is a bigger screen shot of the banner. This banner is used on every page to make the website look consistent and clear to use and look at.

This is the ‘menu’ of the website, it contains all the available pages. Most musicians websites have these with similar categories. Below are some examples from other musicians sites, looking at them we can see a pattern of what should be included in a menu bar, So things like ‘News’ about an artist and some sort of a photo/media/gallery or a ‘Shop’

This is taken from Professor Green’s website

This is taken form Mac miller’s website

The background of the website (the leather skin) is also used on the artists Artwork seen adjacent . This creates a synergy with the two products making them more recognisable.

This page is titled ‘Team’ it features the artist ‘Macklemore’ and main people who work with, giving the fans some information about them. A lot of the times other artists or band websites would feature more information about the people/band/artist, with a biography or a short ‘about me’ paragraph to help the fan connect with the artist and get to know a little about them .

This is the ‘Shows’ page, it features dates and locations that the artist will be performing at. A lot of artist have this sort of information on their website when they are touring, it means that the fans are able to find out if the artist is performing near them or just to see when and where they can see them. It encourages the fans to buy tickets

This is the front page of the merchandise store, it is accessed from the main artist web page . The design is similar of the main website and that helps to maintain continuity so that the user does not get too confused when using the site.

The store features the artist CD/DVD’s , Clothing, Posters and any other merchandise for the artist. When creating my own artist website I will also include a store page, and I will include some of this merchandise for my own artist.