VALENTINEMUSIC

PHASE 1 · DESIGN DIRECTIONS · PREPARED FOR VALENTINE MUSIC GROUP

Welcome, Charles. This is phase 1 of your website: a design direction exercise, not a build. Below are three genuinely different directions the site could take. Your job at this stage is simple: pick the one that feels like Valentine. Once a direction is chosen, phase 2 builds the full site on it.

Every direction is built against your real material rather than placeholders, so you can judge how your catalogue will actually feel. Each one carries the same content: the landing, your Boutique and Independent copy word for word, three catalogue artists (Dave Brubeck, Goo Goo Muck and Judie Tzuke) with the real artwork you supplied, and a taste of the footer. The remaining sections follow in phase 2 in whichever direction wins.

Two things to know as you look. Every album cover is always shown whole, never cropped or overlapped, exactly as the rights require. And wherever you see [CREDIT LINE TO BE SUPPLIED] in red, that is the space reserved for your credit wording, set at its real size so you can see the room it takes.

View each one full screen if you can, and scroll all the way down. They move, and the movement is part of the design: covers turn, sleeves pull out of a crate, entries open. Click what invites clicking. The bar across the top of each page lets you flip between directions over the same content.

  1. 01 STAVE The page is ruled as sheet music. Time runs from 1972 down the left margin, the hero plays itself like a score, and every cover sits on the lines like a note. LIGHT · HERITAGE
  2. 02 VERMILION One unbroken field of the Valentine red. Huge type, and each artist's covers orbit a centre point like the hands of a clock. Click a cover and it introduces itself. SATURATED · CONFIDENCE
  3. 03 THE CRATE Your catalogue as a record crate along the foot of the page. Dig sideways, pull a sleeve, and the whole record opens. The last slot is reserved for the next writer. TACTILE · THE DIG
  4. 04 REGISTER The publisher's own ledger: ruled lines, every fact filed, Valentine entered as no. 1972. Open an entry and the covers are filed with it. WHITE · PRECISE
  5. 05 MASTHEAD A one page broadsheet, The Valentine, published since 1972. Your catalogue reviewed on the records page, your story reported as news. NEWSPRINT · EDITORIAL