Media Design and Music Culture

I have been interested in web design since GeoCities offered free web hosting. Laugh if you must, but because of this interest, I spent most of my undergraduate studies learning best practices in web design, social media, and media editing. There are a few music artists that have successfully mastered the art of best practice and way too many who have not. One band that tries to balance this line is Green Day.

When you first visit the official web site, greenday.com, you are redirected to an ad page for their latest live album. This page is decorated with the album artworkI have been interested in web design since GeoCities offered free web hosting. Laugh if you must, but because of this interest, I spent most of my undergraduate studies learning best practices in web design, social media, and media editing. There are a few music artists that have successfully mastered the art of best practice and I believe one of them is Green Day.

Greenday.com initially redirects you to an ad page for the band's latest live album. I think that the most important information is laid out in a great way to present video, international stores, the bundle package and track information. Take notice how everything is grouped in boxes lined up. The lines match up and everything is in the same artwork as the advertised album. There is also a link at the to to redirect you back to the home page. To be nit-picky, also notice that the ad page is not www.greenday.com but instead is http://greenday.com/cigsvaltn_splash/index.html and the actual home page is http://www.greenday.com/site/homepage.php. This allows you to book mark the actual, permanent url for the home page instead of always being redirected.

The home page has a lot of content to take in. One of the first and most important features of a web site is its navigation. I think this is one place where the web site could make a few changes. An important feature of the design is that the user should never feel like they are taken to another page while accessing information from the same web site. There are a few things like the fan club, the Broadway show, and the Rock Band game that require a redirect to different sites. I think that the navigation should be rearranged to fit the average users needs and not the promotions needs. I think that tour info, music, pics and videos and the store should be listed first, since these are the most sought after details from fans and these are the pages that are actually under the same domain name and look like the homepage.

Also on the home page, there is a flash player with slides for the latest live album, American Idiot on Broadway information, current news and images. It is good to put these things up on the home page so that people who are just browsing do not have to dig too deep to find quick information.

One thing that the home page lacks is information about Green Day's social media. This information can be found in the Extras section, which I think is a big mistake. This information should not be buried under a miscellaneous title. Instead, either put icons on the home page or make a tab in the navigation for these accounts. I think that since the home page is busy enough, so an additional tab should suffice.

Also, if the lead singer has a twitter, post it somewhere. Anywhere. Everywhere.

Not all of this information is perfect but I believe there are some brilliant design elements currently in place but there are always room for improvements. Continue to look at other artist web sites and take note of their good and bad points as these are often frequently done.