Here’s an interesting video I found on the Terence McKenna’s theory of time acceleration where advances in technology particularly the sharing of the information the internet allows us can be used as examples to illustrate the speed of evolution.

Once again many users of the social networking giant facebook have come into contact with a violation of their privacy, a few years ago there was an issue surrounding the terms and conditions of the social networking site which stated that all media posted on the site, including photos and videos, would be under the ownership of facebook forever. This meant that even if the user terminated his/her account, facebook would still own the rights to it! This time around it seems more impeding on our personal lives as this article briefly explains the “rumours” (a term used by facebook as an attempt to make the allegations seem foolish) about the subject at hand.

Basically what has happened is that facebook has changed the global settings of the site so that all profiles will be indexed on google unless the user manually switches their settings to allow for greater privacy. This, to some, may appear to be a harmless act of sharing information (what the internet is most commonly used for) yet what we must remember is just how many people use the site – over 350 million! In its early days it appealed to a large audience and was much preferred over sites of a similar nature such as bebo and myspace because of the secure privacy of information it offered to its users. Now it’s done a complete u-turn on itself and caused a great concern and mistrust in its users, imagine for example how simple it would be now for a sex offender to find a 13-year-old (minimum required age for a facebook account) child in their local area – thanks to the new settings it’s a walk in the park!

People need to wake up and realize that we can not simply switch our minds off when it comes to the internet, we seem to put a great deal of trust and faith into things we actually don’t know a great deal about and if we carry on in this fashion who knows where it might lead…

Remixes & Samples…Where Are They?

The first, and arguably most important,  element of the site I think the site needs improving on is the remixes and samples section. First and foremost I am an artist and therefore take pride and care over my work, given that I was working to a deadline with this site I didn’t want to rush a remix or the production of a sample and let Nettlemouth Remixes fall at the first hurdle because no-one thought the audio material on there was any good. I have embedded an audio media player on both pages which I got from a great site called premiumbeat and just to practice using code around it I edited the html so instead of displaying “Track 1 – Artist” it now says “Track 1 – Nettlemouth”. Following the instructions from the site when it comes to adding in my own audio I will need to put it into the folder entitled “player” which also came from the site. Once these two pages are working the core part of the site will be done

Log In

At the current moment this is a dummy section on the page and one that needs to be amended as when you enter text into the “password” field it gets displayed which, given how sophisticated hackers are, isn’t a good idea. I will also need to make the “log in” text work as a button to enable the user access. The registration form is another element I didn’t want to rush into and is something I wish to spend a considerable amount of time and effort on as it’s absolutely crucial that the private data of any user is kept safe as to abide by the laws of the data protection act.

I can honestly say that once I have taken time and consideration into these improvements for the website it will be up to the stage where I will be confident and proud to have it online as part of the Nettlemouth brand.

Going back to my end user profile I created during the planning process of the website you will see that the site had to cater for a variety of of people ranging from those extremely comfortable and experienced with computers to those who have a basic knowledge. Working to this specification didn’t seem like much of an issue when constructing the site as it tied in with my personal rule to keep the concept and everything else clear for the user to understand.

After looking at a few videos related to Jakob Nielson’s heuristics I came across one which interested me as it’s about having to log in with a user name and password which made me think about the way this feature works on my site. In the video you will see that the site in question insists on logging in to several sections but doesn’t provide any explanation of how to register if the user hasn’t already done so. It made me think carefully about how easy my site would be to use once fully operational online, I began reading the heuristics with regards to the site I have made and have come to the conclusion that being strict with myself and keeping to strict guidelines pays off. I feel that my website would allow almost anyone use it with ease, one thing I may have to change would possibly be the font size, although given that it was done specifically to be black on a white background already provides the user with text that is easy to read and so this may just be a case of me over-thinking.

I have kept all links centered as the navigation bar which is a simple way of laying them out and also allows them to constantly stay in the periphery vision of the user. As for the contact links (email and myspace) I made sure they were underlined and the font colour was blue as it is in many other sites which lets the user feel comfortable with my site.

Arguably the most important detail of the whole project has been maintaining the continuity of the Nettlemouth brand, a brand that has been in constant development for over 5 years and is clear about what it stands for. To take such a brand and create something new and different yet maintain a sense of familiarity was a tough task to go ahead with, however I feel I have done this effectively by making sure I was following a few simple rules:

• Keep the colour scheme
• Make sure everything is simple and clear to understand
• Provide a logo that stands out on the pages
• Keep the overall nettle shape to the logo

If you look at any major brand anywhere in the world the main aspect that lets you know what brand it the choice of colours, with Nettlemouth these are red, white and black; what many believe to be the strongest colours in the world. By using different shades of these colours I was able to create a new look and feel yet keep the Nettlemouth image intact. I decided that as I was making a site for a remix project I would use a sample of the existing Nettlemouth site and flip it around as to avoid directly copying its current position. The section I chose is the footer of the Nettlemouth site and edited the size as I planned to use it as a boarder to the remix site so I wanted it at a thinner width than it already was. Not only did this produce a result I was exceptionally pleased with it is also very in tune with the music creation technique of Nettlemouth; some songs may feature small parts from another song but used in a different way be it an audio sample or a specific sound used as a rhythmic device as opposed to a melodic one for instance.

Keeping everything on the site clear and simple whether it’s the font or the message behind the project is a lesson I’ve learned to do from past experiences in bands and Nettlemouth. It can be very easy for an audience to get the wrong impression of what a band’s about or to simply not get any strong impression at all so what I wanted to do with Nettlemouth Remixes is be clear with myself what I wanted it to be about and do all that I could to convey this message as best I could with the user. As you will have seen in the screen shots I kept the amount of text relatively small following the unwritten rule of “quality not quantity”, what I hoped to achieve with this is that the user wouldn’t have to spend long reading (something I find can get a bit boring on some sites) and that the short time they’ll spend reading will be enough to fully understand the concept behind the site.

Possibly the most common compliment I receive for Nettlemouth in terms of branding is for the logo, it seems to instantly catch the eye of any observer which is something I’m very proud of and so clearly it was something I wanted to carry forward with this project. The way I went about this was modifying (remixing) the existing logo by adding an embossed effect in photoshop, straight away the logo seemed to instantly jump out from the page as soon as it was added. As it’s an effect that isn’t used on the original logo I decided to stick with it. To make sure I maintained the rule of keeping everything clear I felt that the word “remixes” should stand out in someway, the obvious way, I felt, was to have it highlighted in someway. I achieved this through a combination of effects in photoshop after making sure the font was different to the font used for “nettlemouth” the effect that probably had the most impact was “glow” and adjusting the settings to give the impression of an outline around the text. Something to make it blend in with the rest of the Nettlemouth brand was a key feature the logo had to have, a simple and effective way I thought of doing this was to copy the style that the word “Nettlemouth” is written where the “o” is of a different font to make it look like an open mouth and increase the font size.

Clearly the most obvious way to make sure the remixes logo felt like it belonged to the rest of the brand was to take the largest part of the existing logo and use it as the foundation for the remixes one so I copied the nettle shape. When I copied it into photoshop I noticed it was slightly pix-elated and so I had to edit it a small amount to make it more aesthetically pleasing. By doing this I felt positive about the ethics behind the logo as I knew it wasn’t a direct copy.

The following link provides you with an 18 page word document complete with screen shots giving you an explanation and insight into the thinking, planning, implementation and testing of my website:

Screen Shots

As a means of expanding my “online presence” as an artist I have signed up for a Twitter account. Twitter is a great way of getting your work out to a wider audience and can be very successful if carried out with some sort of tactic. The way I am using it at the moment is to connect my existing online accounts with Nettlemouth such as facebook, myspace, last fm and youtube for example last week I “tweeted” about a new track up on the myspace and provided a link to the site.

Links on twitter are something which, without the knowledge of www.tinyurl.com, can cause a major problem when posting. This is due to twitter limiting their users to a mere 140 characters per post which when considering the URL for this blog is 36 characters alone it doesn’t leave much for a decent post. To overcome this issue there is a very clever, simple and easy to use website as I mentioned earlier called tinyurl which shortens any given link after the user has typed it in.

In my opinion a major problem with twitter is it’s tendency to crash if too many people are using it at the same time, this is something which I would’ve thought it would be able to cope with seeing as the main purpose of the site is for world wide communication on a grand scale. I have already encountered this on one occasion, but thankfully it has just been the one time so far.

As for the importance of twitter in modern society I can think of no greater way of world wide public communication than what twitter provides. It has already been used in corrupted elections for the people to let the world know what’s really going on as well as acting as a potential life saver where warnings of natural disasters such as earthquakes can be sent around the globe long before any news media reports it.

In conclusion it feels like twitter is something that will be making it’s way into our lives for better or for worse (in my opinion for better) within the next few years, when used responsibly it is a method of communication that can achieve great results. Keep on tweeting…

Flow Site

Above is a link to a document showing how the pages of the site will be linked together provided with a brief explanation as what each page will be.

Colours & Layout
Above are three web comps I have prepared in photoshop based on the current Nettlemouth website. Similar to the research for online music/entertainment stores the Nettlemouth site uses a three colour scheme which I have adopted for the web comps.

One detail which I overlooked in the research was that most sites that offer the chance to register tend to have the username/password boxes in the top left of the screen, for this reason I decided that mine should also have this feature as it seems to be common practice. By doing what seems like a simple placement I can make the user feel comfortable when using the site as it is a layout that they are already familiar with.

I decided to experiment with the navigation bar as you can see in the centre image, it was a much longer process to make than a straightforward centre navigation bar at the top and personally I feel that the centre-top position works better aesthetically. Although my opinion does count in the overall look and feel of the site it seems as though it is already pre-determined to a degree as I have to make the user feel as though they aren’t “using” the site so to speak, therefore keeping features familiar but different is the key. As you can see on the other two comps I went with the centre-top position with the navigation bar which I feel works more efficiently.

Designing the background was something I found both creatively exciting as I had total freedom as to what to do, yet at the same time I was slightly concerned about it as I knew that it had to meet certain criteria, most importantly it has to allow the user to read the text clearly. After completing the three comps I have decided that a combination of the right and left are most appropriate. I like the way the simplicity of the left one but it’s a bit too dull compared to the right one however this one is too complicated. As for the centre comp I feel the box is too narrow so it would appear to display more text than a wider box which may put off the user.

The Logo

For me the most important part of the design process is the logo as this represents everything the site is about and will appear on every page. I found it fitting to re-design (or “remix”) the current Nettlemouth logo, I found that an emboss effect feels as though the logo is making a mark and gives the sense of movement as though it’s coming out of the screen. Movement is something that has recently played a part in Nettlemouth recently and so for this reason I stuck with the emboss effect modifying it slightly in each web comp.

As far as the font was concerned I thought it best to be as experimental as I felt necessary, obviously there were certain fonts I was clearly not going to use as it had to convey the right message and also be legible. On the left web comp I went with a fairly basic font which was clear to read and thought at the time that simplicity would be the best path to follow, however after experimenting with the logo on the right where I have mixed fonts and various effects, I decided to go all out. As you may be able to see on the centre web comp I added many effects ranging from lighting to distortion.

After creating three different logos I have chosen to go with a blend of the right and centre; I will use the “remix” font from the right one with the effects and “Nettlemouth” font of the centre one, however if this proves too much I will simply use the centre one as I feel this encapsulates the intentions of the site best.

During the presentation of my website plan a very good point was brought up concerning the copyright of the remixes on the site. For obvious legal reasons I will be unable to host material on my site  which the user or myself does not own the rights to and could lead to serious legal action being taken against me.

In Donals S. Passman’s book “All You Need To Know About The Music Business” he explains that both in the U.S. and U.K. “a copyright is secured when something is in a fixed tangible form”. What this means, in terms of music, is that until a song is written down or recorded no one owns copyright to it, in the book Passman uses the example of creating a tune in your head and that while it remains in your head the copyright remains non-existence. This is why copyright is such an important issue as it is incredibly easy for an artist to copyright their work.

That is why I have made the decision to have the website host only material which the user or myself owns the rights to. The way I plan to go about this is having a “terms & conditions” section which all users must accept to on joining the site, by doing this they will agree to only submit remixes of either other users work who have given permission for it to be used in such a way or my own work.

If I am to implement this into my website I am going to have to add a “registration” and “log in” section to the site which will be situated at the top of the page, most likely top right as this is a common location on many commercial sites.