Anatomy of a Musical Album
The album experience
When I was a kid I'd head to the record store as soon as I'd saved up enough money to buy an album. Afterward, I'd head home with my prize, eager to hunker down in front of the record player to listen. I'd hold the jacket in my hands and read every scrap of information on it while the record played.
The cassette took the album out of our living room and put it into our ears via the ubiquitous Walkman. But cassette covers were small and not very art-friendly and so much of the visual and tactile album experience was lost.
The CD further took us away from the album by allowing simple randomization of songs, as well as ripping of the digital data. In many ways, Cds brought about the demise of the album as I knew it, though this process was not obvious at first.
I want to update the album experience I treasured for the modern user. Web pages allow for larger design spaces and the presentation of more information. The ease of short-run CD production allows for customization of the album experience. And straightforward printing of Web content means that each customer can have as much printed information about the album as he or she wishes.
The goal of this site is to facilitate the modern album experience for listeners and fans of my music.
About These Pages
First, apologies to our blind users for the total inaccessibility of this site. The images on the following pages are intended as design components for a site which is text based. I would not otherwise use such extensive image replacement on my page.
Wireframe contains the skeleton of all the pages in the Aislinn the Bard web site, along with descriptions of what each page section contains for each page type.
Wireframe 2 is a version of these pages where the components have been flipped horizontally to place the main nav on the right and the song title and info on the left. If you were printing an "even" page (for example, one where you wanted to punch holes in the right side bcause you were printing pages back to back) you'd use this version. Heavily right-handed mousers might also appreciate this version.
Compp 1 contains the image components for the storyteller album demonstrating its design theme and the fact that the theme predicts the kind of music on the album.
Comp 2 shows what the page looks like when Highslide is used to display an enlarged image of the Storyteller tray card
This site would lend itself to user customization, for example, telling the server to serve up all the rihgt handed versions using the darker theme,.