NOISE Festival new site map

Portrait of a Nation Ning site

Screen grabs from the network part of the Portrait of a Nation site. Members are able to customise their individual pages. It's quite funny as there were lengthy discussion about what background colours we should use, should it be the same as the branding on the main site or should it be different. Then when it comes to using the site the members just decided to customise their own page.

NOSIE Screengrabs

NOISE redesign screengrabs. Incorporating elements video blogging, Flickr feeds, RSS blog feeds, user generated content

Sometimes I wish I could do it all

Relying on other people is too damn stressful

NOISE in the news

Noise festival comes to Sheffield

The Noise Festival has teamed up with the BBC Open Centre in Sheffield and is looking for talented young artists to submit their work to their website and take part in a national competition


Creative Noise

Noise, an online media arts festival, is looking for new talent and will be coming to the BBC Coventry & Warwickshire Open Centre on 14 and 15 February.

NOISE Work in progress screen grab

Above is a screengrab from the current NOISE site redesign. It's tricky as I'm not coding this site but I have a very clear idea of what the site should look like, see the images below. I'm directing someone else in the building of it. It really does feel like I'm an architect and making sure some one builds it correctly. For exmaple I'm not happy with the menu items on the left hand side, there needs to be less text, the curators names need to be removed form the corner and placed on the second line.
The image of the selected work needs to be smaller. The category text doesn't render correclty at that size in Firefox so I'm going to have make those JPEG images or alter the font. The fonts need to be a cosistent size through out the site. And so on.

Hey ho only two weeks to it launches.

NOISE Layouts

Del.icio.us links 5/02/08

Current bookmarked research

My role.....

Below is an email that was sent out yesterday at work. What is interesting is the shifting role I have. The festival will only have one website, I don't work for a design company with brief, after brief. And I'm actually pretty happy with that.

After the new site launches in a couple of weeks my role becomes generating interest in the site. This involves working across all the festival projects and all media but tyeing it into the online promotion.

This isn't traditional graphic design in the sense it involves typography or page layouts. It isn't even website design.

Example, I'm currently setting up the YouTube channel for the festival. I have to decide on which videos to use, find out which videos we have clearance for, make sure we aren't giving content away etc So YouTube becomes a marketing/ broadcasting tool eg A search for Peter Saville brings up about half a dozen relevant results, yet each video has between a thousand and three thousand views. NOISE has interviews with Peter Saville as he curated the previous festival. So we should be using this as opportunity to upload continent to YouTube and then direct users to the NOISE site. I find this idea of blended distribution fascinating. There was quote from the BBC or Channel 4 when they launched a tie in with Bebo which said that there are no longer destination sites. Broadcasters have to work across all these networks, there will be a point where people won't watch BBC or Channel 4 but may spend their time on YouTube or Bebo. You need to use these networks to attract people. Again this is an emerging form of design, broadcasting, advertising, marketing.

Hello all,

To aid the reporting process data collection and observation must be
built into our production processes. For example:

- Participant and audience surveys at events such as BBC Open Centre
days, press launches etc. should include questions relating to age,
gender, ethnicity, disposable income, employment status, internet access
(at home or where?) and media consumption (what mags, channels, sites
etc they frequently view) to assist with future promotion and targeting
of relevant media partners and sponsors. To achieve this we'll need to
train permanent and temporary staff and relevant street teamers in
methods of observation of live events and pre-supply these formatted
report forms.



- Throughout the production phases all staff should gather testimonials
as they arise, and qualitative reports on the intangible impact of
events such as young people's pride in being part of an event (i.e.
record anecdotes), the effect on the community or the long-term impact
on a location/group of participants.



- Online registration forms provide age, gender, ethnicity, post codes,
education etc.



- Web site statistics reports on the effectiveness of the design of the
site architecture and content (i.e. pages not visited, possible reasons
and ideas for increasing traffic or useability), the quality of visitors
dial-up connections, and the geographical spread of the audience.



- Media evaluation should include an assessment of the relationships
built up with key national media channels/titles and copies of radio and
television shows, online and print articles and mentions including
public endorsements in chat-forums. The collated media coverage can then
be evaluated for 'quality' of reporting. This could include an ad hoc
scoring system for coverage of the festival's URL, brand prominence,
competitive mentions of key messages, overall article tonality and
size/length of the article. The quantitative reporting on media coverage
is not an exact science as we know from 713million "viewers" of Noise
media in 2006. Magazines and print titles can supply data per title
relating loosely to the number of copies sold, multiplied approximately
three times to cover other readers accessing each copy, as we know this
does not equate to the number of readers actually reading our articles.
Television figures can be obtained by programme. The European
Sponsorship Association advise using REACH figures not cumulative,
average or peak television figures. For example a sporting event showing
on one to three Sky Sports programmes daily, with an average audience
per programme of 23,000, over a four day period would reach 461,000
unique individuals. Radio figures are not as granular as by programme.
Online the unique visitors can be monitored and verified, the length of
time they spend on the site and pages visited, will provide the most
accurate analysis of all the media channels.