The Last Warped Tour: Quality Media for the Fans
I didn’t understand the importance of smart image, video, and audio outputting. I could understand how it was useful, but not it’s importance, and how it’s probably in your best interest to learn how to do it properly. That is, not until I created my project that needed smart outputting.
The theme of my project was the last Van’s Warped Tour. You might have heard of it, and if not, you missed out! Rock, punk rock, and metal bands joined together and played shows in almost every state all summer long. They had done this since 1995, and decided to end it this year. I had fond memories of this tour, so I decided to dedicate my project to it!
I was taking a class that used iBooks Author, and that is the platform I chose to create my final project on. However, half way through the semester, I realized that I didn’t like the how my project was turning out. The design layout was all wrong, and I knew that any media that was put in, would feel mostly out of place and forced. I decided to take the challenge straight on and created a website using Hype.
Initially I wanted to create a guide on how to make the most of the last Van’s Warped Tour. After re-evaluating my platform, I realized that those who were going probably have gone many times before and already know what to do and how to have a great time. Instead, I decided to revolve my Hype site on the bands playing.
This seemed like a much better idea because I didn’t want to create a heavy text project when this was about a music festival. It just didn’t make sense. This platform also required a lot of images, audio, and video! That’s what this whole class was about. Learning how to output these formats efficiently and learn the processes needed to tackle this important aspect of development and delivery in the professional world.
The work that was put in, wasn’t so much design as it was learning and exploring outputting, which is obvious. It took a lot of testing and research to figure out how to get the best quality without the highest file size. If I wanted each page to load faster but also keep the image and sound quality, it had to be perfect. No lagging, no fuzz, no crap.
While images and video were important aspects of this website, I believe that the most important thing was the sound. I added an icon in each band page that would play a popular song of theirs. In testing the different formats and figuring out the best quality for my project, I wasn’t too surprised by which formats had the worst quality. Mostly because you don’t often see those formats being used anyways. Sometimes that happens, and it’s going through this process that either reassures you or surprises you.
Jade Longhurst is a student in the Digital Media program at Utah Valley University, Orem Utah, studying Interaction & Design. The following article relates to DGM 2341 course and representative of the skills learned.
