#49: Album Cover Bank
We decided to narrow the scope of Idris’ vintage-themed website and build a repository for album covers and stories about them. The stories in question are the essays that our three writer friends are working on.
This prompted us to change the project's name to “Album Cover Bank”. We think the term is more descriptive and illustrates the act of collecting a list of album covers and essays.
The current database on Airtable is difficult to navigate. The filter function is complicated, and there is no introductory text to explain what the webpage does. It would probably take a while for someone to figure out what the site was about if they came across it by chance.
As a result, we decided to build a custom website with a user-friendly database. You can view the mobile and web prototype.
To make the site more interesting, we added a spotlight feature that shows details of a new album cover every day. The database currently contains 5245 album covers, so we won’t run out of new covers to show for at least another 12 years 🤭. Over time, the website could evolve into an archive for album cover artists, with a portfolio of covers for every artist in the database.
Idris drew inspiration for the project’s branding by categorising the album covers from 1960–1970 to identify patterns and design styles used.
We work with the writers to conduct research and develop a presentation style for their essays. The website is expected to go live on December 4th, and we hope to have two stories completed by then.
Also, we’ll be collaborating with a friend to help build the database functionality and spotlight feature.
