Number Nine
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Number Nine :: www.kencinnus.com/numbernine ::
is an alternative band from Houston, Texas. I only exaggerate slightly when I say that they own every piece of sound and lighting equipment known to man. Their shows are spectacular and they feature a heavy techno beat. These guys are creative geniuses who go all out on stage. This leaves little money for anything else since they are not signed with a record label.
I did a few things on this site that I normally don't do because of who it was for. I felt it was one of the rare cases where white text on a black background is appropriate. I was playful with the placement of graphics and text, especially in their bio section. I used a bloody font in their tour dates section which some of their fans, if they had the font installed on their computer, would appreciate. It was nothing too technical.
For navigation I used a graphical interface from Andy's Art Attack (www.andyart.com). I have since tried to stop using graphical buttons where nicely formatted text will work instead, but Andy's buttons are beautiful. I visited the free section in Andy's site called the Button Vault often enough so that when he offered everything from the site on a CD-ROM I jumped on it. This interface was one of the many found on the CD. These are easy to add words to and they lend themselves to beautiful rollovers. This set was especially high-tech looking and works well on Number Nine's site.
I also used one of his buttons to take people into the "IXperience". I really wanted to get creative and break some more rules so I got the idea of a walk-through (click-through) gallery to feature information about the band, their songs, and their concert photos. These pages were going to be big download hogs but it was OK based on the theory that it was worth it for the experience.
A warning page explains about the download times and the artistic nudity that will be encountered as well as what fonts to have installed in order to make it look the best. It also let me employ a little trick I picked up from one of David Siegel's books. The large graphic that is needed on the next page gets downloaded into a single pixel on this introduction page. By the time the visitor finishes reading the page, it is loaded into their computer's cache memory. When they click on the link at the bottom of the introduction page the next page loads very fast. This technique is used on every page so that the next one in line appears instantly.
The band had provided sample WAV files for every song on their current CD. This was one of those rare occasions where it was OK, even expected, that each page of the IXperience would fill the room with sound. The name of the track is listed at the bottom of the page before the arrow to go to the next page with no further explanation. It is an experience. Sometimes the juxtaposition of the words in the title to the rest of the pages content is amusing.
At the end of the IXperience is a credits page. I made it like they might make one for a movie or a CD's liner notes. This is fitting to the site. This was a good place to put copyright notices too.
The contents of the IXperience are the same as the rest of the site but in a different format. It doesn't allow a visitor to pick-and-choose or to go back. When it is over the visitor is put back onto the home page again where they can go directly to anything they are still interested in.
The band has since broken up and I'm storing this piece of work on my site for demonstration purposes.
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