The brief

We designed Simon’s original website in 2008, and he reapproached us in 2012 to refresh the site. Aside from some changes to the content (adding new CDs, Repertoire material and audio), he wanted to give the design a tweak.

What we did

A splash of colour

Neither Simon nor we saw any need for a drastic redesign, so we kept the existing site templates, but replaced the black-and-white photographs with some new shots Simon had had taken, and introduced a little more colour to the design overall, offering Simon a choice of light on dark and dark on light options before changing the template. We also changed the fonts on the site, taking advantage of recent developments in web typography which allow greater flexibility of choice.

Soundcloud integration

In line with Simon’s general keenness to use social media to maximum effect to promote his site, we encouraged Simon to put his audio on Soundcloud, which has excellent facilities for sharing and self-promotion, not to mention its excellent performance and speed, as a dedicated audio service. Using Soundcloud’s inbuilt HTML5 widget we were then able to drop the sounds directly into Simon’s site, with a colour scheme matching his. Any changes Simon makes to the Soundcloud set list are reflected instantly on the site.