Site no 3: Who said Silence was Golden?
Once entered through the index-page the main section appeared as shown below (the index page basically just showed the same dragon crest as can be viewed on the example below).
Click image for close-up
I only included the most important sections of the website in the frame shown at the left of the screen. It was done so purely because the design didn't allow more buttons without the adding of a scroller. Further down on the main-page was added sections like "Introduction" (discarded section nowadays), "Tales of Rip-off", "Who was Elvira Madigan?", "Philosophy" (a section I never wrote anything in, but for some reason thought was a good idea to include), "Interviews", "Copyright Issues" (since I was under my own contract this was necessary) and the only working "Site Map" ever featured on an elviramadigan.com site. It was this split up of the sites general navigation that was a main contribution to the 2:1 Versions eventual demise.
The dragon was in truth only a design detail on the website and never thought of as an icon, crest or symbol to be associated with EM. Eventually these kinds of details were needed to be thought of more thoroughly as Elvira Madigan became more official. So in the 2:2 site they were all removed.
Click image for close-up
Above is shown the "Songs and Lyrics" section which still was a seperate page from the discography. Time would have to pass until the next website-version before I came up with a merged solution.
Click image for close-up
One of the highlights of the 2:1 site is defenitly the Trackdetails and lyrics for each song. The imagery looks indeed very nice and for the first time, the lyrics and trackdetails were not seperated into two different pages. By clicking the "Lyrics" icon shown in the image one was merely directed further down the same document.
What was extremely annoying though was that as soon as You clicked on a songtitle from the "Songs & Lyrics" You got a new pop-up window featuring a new page like the image example above. This meant that You could get an enormous amount of new windows if You read many different lyrics/trackdetails and didn't care to close each as soon as You were finished. I suppose I thought it was a neat idea at first but got so fed up with it (as well as comments from others) that I believe I eventually removed that function after a few months. But designwise the pages for the songs were truly extraordinary.
A rather vital note is that this 2:1 site was the first to feature English translations of the lyrics that were up until here only in Swedish.
Click image for close-up
A somewhat original idea and example of graphical nonsense that looked rather nice was how I handled the "History" page. Above is added an example that shows how that particular section looked once You scrolled down as You read the text.
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(...Continuing from left column:)
I had done some designed imagery that was built up on goldenbars and small boxes showing parts of the dragon of the main-page. It was included purely for the eye and filled no function whatsoever. I suppose these kinds of details made the site look like millions but also made it a little too large by the standards of those days.
Click image for close-up
Too large, was also probably the imagemap that made out the "Gallery". Although I really liked the design of this imagemap on which You clicked certain sections to go to a page where You could see that specific image (obviously), I never felt at ease with the fact that these images were taken during a short period after I just cut all my hair off. Having had long hair up until then made these images feel unappropriet.
It was the many requests for at least a few images that led me to include the gallery so I only viewed it as a rather crude solution to a small problem. Once my hair had grown a bit I went onto doing a proper photo-shoot which led to this section being removed. But I do believe it tagged along onto the 2:2 Version and stayed there for a short while.
Generally I must say I was rather surprised as I explored this previous site by the lack of links to other sites. I suppose I hadn't established that many contacts to webzines around the globe yet. And I was surprised by the fact how fresh many things look on this site, some even better than on the 2:2 Version wich succeeded this one. The main reason for not using the same graphics however, were due to the fact I hadn't saved or logged the progress while creating the images - A rookie mistake I make sure I don't repeat today. This meant that when new songs were to be featured for the release of "Witches..." I couldn't use the same images for the songtitles so I had to come up with something else. I then also took the opportunity to make many of the images a little smaller.
Apart from the graphical situation many structural details needed to be further improved. As mentioned earlier the split up navigation from the main-page was something I needed to deal with, and the solution was obviously smaller buttons in the scroller and that meant making entirely new images from scratch.
Dates Memorobilia:
22 September (2000):
The site is launched
16 October:
"Blackarts" is finally released after the date has been pushed back from the initial September 18.
24 October:
Rambo RIP 23 October 2000. Rambo was a dog.
5 February (2001):
The plans and dates for the Promotion tour is made available.
1 November:
I reveal the entire tracklist for "Witches..." for the first time. I also claim that the releasedate for the CD will be November 19.
20 November:
I have to push the releasedate forward to December 3 because of the manufacturer having screwed up the printing of the sleeve.
28 November:
The 2:1 version is slayed.
The site successing this 2:1 version was the 2:2 Version of which You can read more about here.
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