Final Website

Here is a link to our finished band website: https://firelightfalcons.wixsite.com/officialwebsite

Here is a preview of the home page:

Logo update for our band

We thought that we should update our logo so that it looks more professional. As a group we thought it was best that we made the typography of the bands name 'Firelight Falcons' the same as it is on our band website and CD pack so it the same throughout are whole product. 

Another thing that we changed is the background to a golden colour because we felt that with the bright yellow and red background it looked a bit unprofessional with us doing it on Paint. Therefore, using a more professional software we used Photoshop to make the background gold and then we added in the bands name.

After this we updated the logo on all our social media and YouTube.

Here is how it looks:

Updates and changes to website

Over time we have been making developments to our band's website. These include:

1. Changing the background on the majority of the pages as we felt that there were too many trees which meant it got quite repetitive. Therefore, to make it interesting we included some photos we had taken away from setting of the music video which still had a nature aspect to them. 
2. As a group we thought we should change the font for their band name 'Firelight Falcons' as previously it was quite a bulky font and did not stand out much with it having lower caps other than the start of the words. Therefore, we changed it to 'Marzo' which stands out more as it has a thinner style to the text but puts all the letters as capitals. 
3. On the ABOUT page we removed the singular shot of one of the band members and added a group one with a slideshow underneath with a picture of all the members individually. Also, we inserted another quote from a made up magazine. 
4. We added '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. 
5. We put Spotify and iTunes buttons to the homepage of our website above the album to show the multiple ways people can access music currently, from streaming, buying on an app, as well as ordering a physical copy online through the band's shop. 
6. On our HOME and MUSIC pages we added our final front cover to our album playlist. 
7. We rearranged the SHOP page so it looked more professional, this included changing the set out of some of the merchandise and prices, along with the font of the titles. We also put the album into the shop. 
8. We added another page called the GALLERY which includes behind the scene shots of the band members. 
9. For the CONTACTS page we created emails for all the addresses we made up so they actually worked. 
10. Finally, we added a slideshow on our HOMEPAGE of snapshots from our music video and on the VIDEOS tab we added our final music video.

Link to website: https://firelightfalcons.wixsite.com/officialwebsite

More ideas for the front and back cover

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, I had the inspiration to have our band members face the front of the front of the cover and the back on the back cover while doing my analysis of a band website and seeing a similar concept for the McBusted album 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 music on our band website

We have decided to name our band's album 'Transylvania', after the band's single that we are creating the music video for. We also thought that to make our CD be more realistic, we add other songs on to it. Therefore, Elsie 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

Second filming schedule for final music video and website update

On Wednesday we will continue filming. Here is the schedule we did so we knew what needed to be done:

Also, we added information to the ABOUT page on our website, with a review on the band from

a magazine and some general things about what the band have been doing.

Updating the website

Today Elsie added the wristbands that Laura made yesterday to our band website and duplicated the 'Buy Now' buttons next to them so that they all matched. We decided as a group to make the price £2.50 as usually small merchandise is cheaper than clothing and we made sure to make the button the 'Price' button was the same.

Then we needed to complete our social bar displayed at the top right hand side of our website. This involved creating a YouTube channel and changing the profile to our band logo and the background of a tree to show our theme of trees. After that we created a Instagram account 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). We then linked both of these to our social bar on our website.

Youtube page:

Instagram page:

Finally, we added in the contacts for the 'CONTACTS' page. The contacts included: management, PR and booking. This involved coming up with fake names and emails.

Updating the wristbands for the websites

Today our group thought it would be best for us to update our wristbands for our bands merchandise line for the same reason we updated the clothing to make it look more professional. We thought Laura would be the best to design these with her artistic abilities. Laura came up with doing a falcon icon on the front of 2 of the wristbands, as well as adding the band name and some of our singles (Transylvania) lyrics on 2 of them. Then on the last one Laura decided to draw a simple tree design (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.

Here is what they look like:

Creating a Twitter account

Today my group and I decided to make a twitter page for our band 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 we had previously from when Elsie 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:

Here is the social links bar that we have linked our twitter to on our website:

Developing merchandise and updates to our website and CD cover inspiration

Today we decided that we should update our merchandise so it would be more professional. We thought that it would be a good idea to use the falcon from the bands logo to show a consistency in the bands design and branding. Instead of using cartoon templates of clothing we should used plain real clothing to make it more realistic. Elsie found some images of pieces of clothing and then edited our falcon onto them.

Here is what they look like:









Elsie then added these to the website and we decided that the t-shirts should cost £15 and the jumpers £20 as they are usually higher in price. We added 'Price' and 'Buy Now' buttons next to each one and decided on their placing and colouring. Furthermore, we added two headers 'T- Shirts' and 'Jumpers' in a pastel orange as it matched our aesthetic.

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

Here are the updates to our website:
Website link: https://firelightfalcons.wixsite.com/officialwebsite






On Homepage


On Gigs Page

Finally, Elsie found some artwork of a nature based piece on animals and thought that it would fit our tree theme shown across our website perfectly. This inspired us so we decided that Laura should draw a version with a falcon. We think that we could use this as part of our albums front or back cover.


Here is our inspiration and our version drawn by Laura:



Inspiration from Twitter.


The version Laura drew.

Here is a rough draft of how it could look used as an album cover:

Website

Today we started creating our website on wix.com. We made sure to create an email for our band so in the web address it would be more professional with it saying our bands name. The photos chosen for the background are from extra shots Elsie took when she went to take the interior location shots.

We decided to tile the photos used for the background from the pages ABOUT - SHOP as it makes the pictures clearer and professional. But kept the HOME and CONTACT backgrounds the same as they fitted the website nicely as they were. Furthermore, in the header design we put our bands name Firelight Falcons and their company's logo directing the audience straight away to the bands name and who they are signed to.

Also, we learnt how to embed videos, so we changed the video link to our song lyrics as that will be our bands 'single'. For the 'ABOUT' we added a picture of Alex, however, we will change the picture at a later date so it looks more formal and professional.

Finally, we made changes to the template we used given by the site WIX by getting rid of anything unnecessary, adding the link 'SHOP' so we can sell the merchandise we have designed and made changes to the original templates default setting by putting dark transparant tiles underneath any writing we will do to make it clearer.

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

How it looks so far:

Developing are merchandise

As mentioned previously, we changed our band name from 'Firelight Foxes' to 'Firelight Falcons'. So, as we have changed our name, we decided that we needed to get going with some new merchandise ideas for our website. Today, we came up with 2 rough draft t-shirt designs that we will later develop and make more professional if we stick with that idea. Here are the 2 t-shirts (They both will be made available in black and white).

Click on the images to make them larger:

  

We nominated Laura to do a quick sketch as she is the best and the creative side of a project, she took some inspiration off some images found online of different types of easy to draw Falcons. We also decided that this might come in handy later on with more merch ideas etc.

Here is a brief look at the sketch she did:

Finding a band name and thinking about merchandise

Elsie, Laura, and I have been thinking about a band name (as we have decided not to use McFly to make it more of our own) and we settled on the name 'Lightfire Foxes'. We chose this as we believe that it represents the band's genre well and also believe that we could use an intertextual reference to a fox maybe in our final music video (making it more personal to the band that we are creating, as well as their style). As at points in our music video, settings will be more gloomy and dark, therefore, we decided that it would be a good idea to maybe include a fox here).

As I said, we have also been trying to gather some ideas for some merchandise that our band would sell (That we can add onto our website). We also tried to make these so as they would fit with our band's name and the overall concept. 

These are the colours which we have decided to sell the wristbands in:

We decided no to make the colour range to vast as then some colours may not be liked by some audience members. However, we decided we really wanted/needed to add the oranges and the red as it fits in with the idea of the fox.

Here's a look at 3 of the ideas we have so far for our wristbands. As these are rough drafts, they shall later be made to look more professional and more variations should be released (along with other pieces of merchandise).