Type Records
Record label websites always fascinate me. Partly because, I suppose, I’ve always wanted to run a record label of my own. And partly because I spend so much time on them, looking for new releases, for press materials, for MP3s, etc. And it amazes me how often label websites get it wrong. Often they’re poorly designed, probably intended more as a portfolio piece by the designer than anything useful and informational, lacking in substantial material and content, and woefully out of date.
These are not criticisms that I can apply to Type Records’ website. Type Records is a UK-based label specializing in, as they put it, “inspiring experimental music from around the world”. It certainly helps that one of the label’s founding members, Stefan Lewandowski, is a web designer himself.
The site design is clean and minimal, using Flash to a very minimal effect (for example, the masthead on the homepage that contains information about the latest release). The imagery used on the site is quite beaufitul, lending the site a nice bit of atmosphere and complementing the stunning imagery on the label’s releases.
Navigation-wise, it’s pretty simple and straightforward as well. Which is very helpful because the site is absolutely packed with information about all of their artists, releases, events, etc. This includes MP3 and video downloads, desktop pictures, and photos. And as someone who has spent way too much time scouring label websites trying to find good artwork to use for reviews, I’m very appreciative of Type putting up nice, big versions of their album artwork.
I know, I know… it’s rather obvious, isn’t it? And yet you’d be amazed at how many labels deny their fans and customers such information.
The site, however, could use a little improvement under the hood. HTML tables are used for much of the layout when a CSS-based approach could handle the design quite easily and more efficiently. The site does offer some cool design switching methods (check out the little boxes in the upper-lefthand corner) to pull up different images based on the time and season. These too could probably be CSS-ified, using a JavaScript styleswitcher rather than page reloads.
But such issues aside, the site still works as a whole. And the more I visit it, the more I find myself wishing that all label websites were as rich and rewarding.
Comments
Bill Van Loo
December 20, 2005 9:19pmVery nice looking. I definitely agree with your points about how good it is to have the basic information available in an easy-to-find manner, and it’s great they offer the downloads they do.
I just updated my own little project label site, chromedecay:
http://www.chromedecay.org
There are still some things that need to get tweaked, but I think it’s a big improvement on what I had before. The biggest improvement was pulling my releases forward onto the front page. I’ll be adding/updating a few other things based on your comments above (more downloads, bigger images, etc).
aaron
December 21, 2005 12:13amI would agree on the Type Records website. Other than the Sub Pop site, it’s about the best out there in terms of information they make available and the ease of navigation. One of the little touches I enjoy, in fact, is that they have multiple levels of navigation (breadcrumbs, as we refer to them in my day job) that make it easier to always know where you’re at when you’re on the site. It’s a really great site, and I would venture to say that one of the reasons they use tables instead of CSS is that CSS is simply still a smidge clunky when it comes to making pages on a strict grid system. Supposedly they’re building columns and rows into the next version of CSS (which will be much welcomed, and I think more people will adopt it). At any rate, I think it’s one of the better label sites out there.