Thoughts on the minimalist Approach to Website for independent film

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DAJ57

What are your thoughts on the minimalist style of the Red Black and Blonde Website. It has just been redone. The movie is an independent film about four Texas Women who try to rob a convenience store. After a night of bithching and debauchery, will they be ready for their mission in the morning. Does the website reflect this? Would you want to watch this? What would you do different? Thoughts on marketing? Thanks

www.REDBLACKandBLONDE.com
 
cameronchapman said:
Black and white does not equal minimalist.
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Got to agree, that website isn't minimalist at all, in fact it's kind of cluttered.

Here are some examples of minimalist websites that you might seek to replicate:

http://www.montylounge.com/
http://www.lafabrica.com/
http://www.ifancyasnog.com/
http://www.tictocfamily.com/

Hopefully that will be food for thought.

As Cameron suggests, minimalism in web design is not about colour but about the way you space the components of the site.
 
There should be a comma after Red: The Red, Black and Blonde.

One could even lobby for one after Black, but at the very least add one after Red.

* things get crazy when commas go missing...

"It's time to eat, Grampa!"

"It's time to eat Grampa!"
 
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cameronchapman said:
Yeah. I write about web design for a living and have a book about it coming out this fall from John Wiley & Sons.
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Well that's pretty conclusive.

Reminds me of a friend of mine who as the manager of a five star hotel was called in as a witness on a counterfeit money case. Some guests tried to pay the bill with the dodgy foreign money.
The lawyer for the counterfeiter tried to discredit my friend by asking "So how is it you are such an authority on foreign currency?"
"Because I worked in the foreign currency department of a bank for 5 years before I was manager of the hotel" he replied.

Kapow
 
Michael Allen said:
Well that's pretty conclusive.

Reminds me of a friend of mine who as the manager of a five star hotel was called in as a witness on a counterfeit money case. Some guests tried to pay the bill with the dodgy foreign money.
The lawyer for the counterfeiter tried to discredit my friend by asking "So how is it you are such an authority on foreign currency?"
"Because I worked in the foreign currency department of a bank for 5 years before I was manager of the hotel" he replied.

Kapow
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:lol:

I was thinking something similar, Daily Show played a clip where some dumb fake news talking head was interviewing someone and didn't like what he had to say.

Her: "That's your opinion? Well, do you have an economics degree?"

Him: "Yes ma'am I do. With Highest Honors."


On Topic:

The white background isn't minimalist, it's blinding. I do love the illustration, that part is awesome. IMO: Ditch the background and use the illustration as a single page. Make all of your links into little things that show up/highlight when you mouse-over. The web designer can tell you what that's called. :D Like mouse over one of the guns gives you a link to something.
 
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cameronchapman said:
Yeah. I write about web design for a living and have a book about it coming out this fall from John Wiley & Sons.
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What are your thoughts on the website?

kinglis said:
Or maybe: The Blond, Red, Black and Blond again

Referring to http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0374546/
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:) :)

brettzdamn said:
I love the illustration of the 4 girls on the website! Who does the illustration for you? Im verry interested.
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Juarez Ricci is the name of the artist who painted the poster. He is a great Artist from Brazil. Incredible character movie art. You can check out more of his work at http://juarezricci.deviantart.com/gallery/?offset=24

We wanted the poster to look like an old school movie poster, back when they used to paint posters. Inspired by the original Star Wars poster also. Juarez did an amazing job and made a great poster for the film.
 
DAJ57 said:
What are your thoughts on the website?
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Like everyone else has said, the illustration is your strong point. Right now the site is way too cluttered and that takes the focus off the content. You want two things to stand out: that illustration and your trailer. Everything else is filler. So figure out a way to do that.

I like the idea someone else mentioned about making the illustration your background, though I'd be careful about having links that aren't instantly recognizable as links (it sucks from a usability standpoint). If it were me, I'd make the illustration your background (the page shouldn't scroll either horizontally or vertically, and the image should automatically resize based on the browser window size), put a prominent link over the center to view the trailer, and when that's clicked on, have the trailer open in a modal window. Any other content you have should also open into a modal window, preferably linked from either a header or footer navigation bar. There are free tutorials and code snippets online that can show you how to do all of the above.
 
wheatgrinder said:
..

EDIT: I totally want to make a movie like that though!
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Yes, I know. For some reason it's appealing. It's like R. Rodriquez's Grindhouse right?

It must be a blast to be on one of his sets. Rodriguez seems to have so much fun with his films. Never anything heavy handed, or chasing awards or box office. Just fun.
 
Minimalist.......

  1. The header needs to be clean. There are two graphics now and one looks stretched. Move the Red Black and Blonde title text underneath the menu to the header and delete the one thats there now.
  2. Ideally the header logo should match the one on the poster exactly or vice-versa.
  3. The menu text is too big.
  4. The vertical menu is redundant, remove it.
  5. Put the screenings, news and contact links in the horizontal menu.
  6. Remove the text over the social site icons.
  7. Change the twitter feeds background color to white.
  8. Remove the border around the illustration and make it slightly larger.
  9. Put the trailer above the illustration or below it and make it the same width.
  10. Remove the border around the content area, or add it to the header.
 
I don't see the site as having "minimalist" design as much as very little design, which is a very different thing. As others have said the poster looks well designed, but the rest of it looks thrown together - I'd say you need to find a good designer to do the site just like you did with the poster.
 
I'm no expert, but one thing I would add is that on the poster (which is excellent, as others have said) the font looks quite cool, works really well with the illustration and feel of the piece as a whole. However, it looks pretty amateurish as the header. I think that in black and white it doesn't look as good as it does in the dark blue, and also looks stretched. Just my 2 cents, like people have said if you can make the poster more prominent and declutter the top of the screen no doubt this can be fixed pretty easily.
 
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