Creative Brief

 

Goals of the site:

The American Philharmonic is a unique organization. It is a full size professional symphonic orchestra, 60-75 musicians, that performs 5-6 concerts per season. All of the staff, board, conductor, musicians and ushers are volunteers. No one is paid and all the concerts are offered free of charge. The orchestra is supported by donations form concert attendees, individuals, grants and corporate partners so fundraising and promotion are priorities.

The vision of the American Philharmonic, Sonoma County is that there will be 25 orchestras modeled after the American Philharmonic, Sonoma County in cities around the US in the next 25 years.
The mission of the American Philharmonic, Sonoma County is: "To make the beauty of music and the power of community alive and available for everyone."
The slogan of the American Philharmonic, Sonoma County is: The People's Orchestra.

The people who attend the concerts of the American Philharmonic come from all walks of life, it's very democratic, the dress is casual and the venue is usually full. Open seating is the rule so the best seats are first come served.

Look and feel:

The American Philharmonic, Sonoma County logo is gray letters spelling American Philharmonic underlined with magenta letters for Sonoma County under that. This was designed as a letterhead logo and looks classy on white but is hard to combine with any color combination. After noticing that a number of major orchestras used a white reverse of their logo in a large graphic on their websites, I realized that this was the solution to the color problem while maintaining the integrity of the logo.

With the mission statement, slogan and the logo in mind I chose a photo of the orchestra and audience during the standing ovation after the finale of Beethoven's 9th, the "Ode To Joy". This photo illustrates the relationship between the orchestra and audience. Over the bottom of the photo in large semi transparent letters stretching from edge to edge is the orchestra's motto. "The Peoples Orchestra". The page header expresses the mission statement of the orchestra and sets the tone for the rest of the site.

The colors of the site are black and a maroon-red which give a feeling of the logo with a neutral tan added as a third color. These three colors go well with the photos that will be in the site. All the text in the site will be black with red headings and accents.

I made two versions of the design by reversing the colors in the top nav bar and and the sidebar. One version has a red nav bar and side bar with tan type the other has a tan nav and side bar with red type. Most peoples first impression is that they like the red bars with tan type because of its striking appearance but gravitate to the tan bars with red type after a short while saying its more friendly and easier to read.

Navigation:

The navigation is located in two places a horizontal bar under the header which contains the pages most read and in the sidebar are the "second level" pages. We are trying to avoid drop down menus for two reasons, we want to keep the links to all the pages visible at all times to encourage the visitor to look further and because a large segment of the audience are elderly who might become confused by drop down menus.

The footer of each top level pages will be a photo of the orchestra on stage playing that fades into the page at the top.

The pages on the left side bar will be considered as second level pages and have a various close-up photos of the orchestra in the footer or on the right side, which ever compliments the content best. The left side bar will only have links in it.

Maintenance:

Once the site is handed over to the client the site will be maintained and updated by Krisha Montmorency woh has been maintaining the present site using Dreamweaver.