Tuc30100's Blog

Web Site Analysis and Site Map
The Hush Sound

According to Professor Morrow, there are many purposes to a website. A website may inform, entertain, promote or provide an avenue through which to socialize, persuade, protect, and even maintain a business. Each website has a specific tone, point of view, audience the site targets, content, means of navigation and design elements. A good website is compelling and will provide you with reasons to keep coming back. Based on these requirements we will now analyze the effectiveness of theHushSound.com, the official website of the band the Hush Sound.
Type theHushSound.com into your web browser, a beautiful pink flower appears in the corner a top a landscape photo of a gray cloudy sky meeting a greenish-brown plain. The navigation bar, a semi-horizontal footer of white trains that seem to be riding along the bumpy horizon provides the consumer access to any information they would need to know about the band. Sporting plenty of attractive and simple empty space the site does a good job, right off the bat, of informing the consumer who the subject is.
Sometimes the most attractive appearing websites can actually be the most difficult to navigate. TheHushSound.com manages to maintain its appeal and still remains easy to use. With helpful links to the bands merchandise, purchasing sites, photos and videos, the consumer has access to anything they may need. Yet, behind the pretty exterior the site actually has numerous flaws, which quickly negate all the hard work that went into it. By providing nine different links that within three clicks of the mouse each lead you to outside sites like Myspace.com or LiveJournal.com. Websites with so much content and distractions, that a person is very likely to not return to the Hush Sound’s site once redirected to one of the above. In addition the site displays a news bar streaming advertisements to download the bands new song but no visible links to do so. Also, five blank picture slots that lead to unavailable/error websites when clicked on. The band does have two videos available to watch on the site, but the screen doesn’t enlarge any bigger than the size of the tiny video player box. The link to FriendsOrEnemies.com (FOE) leads to the sites homepage, not the Hush Sounds FOE account, or any information written about them. Not to mention, the bands MySpace page provides more songs to listen to and pictures to view, then this, their official web site. One would also have to visit their MySpace page to find out that the band recently took a hiatus to work on individual projects, and will not begin touring again until late two thousand ten.
One could easily apply the saying ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’ when discussing this website. While the site appears put together it is really more along the lines of slapped together. An official band website made of a nothing more than a few pretty animated pictures, tiny video player, and links to other sites. The site has a pretty exterior and provides most of the information a consumer would want to know when accessing their website, yet the information for is so sporadically placed among the site’s links and they do not achieve the ultimate goal of making the consumer return. Yet there’s still hope, with slightly better planning this website could easily work their way up the scale.
PowerPoint – Site Map

For this assignment, we were given photographs of a female subject, and were instructed to make a web page for her. I chose to make the girl in the photographs an Intro. to Digital Photography teacher. The site image I’ve created, is her class website, which she built to further aid her students in their photographic endeavors. All the images given to us display something about this girl, and from each one we learn something new. So I’ve chosen, for my one required image, the photograph of her playing guitar, and have placed it on the page as a very simplified example of Environmental Photography.

The purpose of this project was, to edit for continuity.
[Vimeo=http://vimeo.com/11144056]

For this project, I spent a while looking for the perfect song. I listened to probably over 60 songs on freemusicarchive.com while viewing the still images over and over. After settling on the Purple Duck’s “Mating Season,” I decided to use the images and the knowledge I’ve acquired of Final Cut as an assist to explain the song. My video is meant to be ‘cute’ and make you chuckle while viewing. Even though I did work very hard in the editing process, I wanted viewing the video to be a easy going and positive experience.
There is one point in the video where you will watch a black screen, this is intentional. I also edited the song to shorten the length, so it is not the exact same as the song you would hear if you followed the link (http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Purple_Duck/)above. Enjoy!