Brendan Perry
How do you cram a multi-layered works archive, full screen photo gallery, two channel music player, Yahoo Maps guestbook, RSS-friendly news engine and script-driven aurora borealis into a minimalist Flash website? Answer: Brendan-Perry.com.
What a trip! Steve first met Brendan when he toured the world with the man as his guitarist on the 1999 “Eye of the Hunter” tour, and they became friends. Steve built Brendan’s original Flash site back in 2000, using Flash 5, and we decided eight years on to persuade Mr Perry that it was time for a refresh.
Brendan is a man who knows what he likes, and is not easy to please… but when you do find the recipe that floats his boat, is so generous with positivity and excitement it is hard to believe. He does not suffer fools, gladly or otherwise… so the initial stages of trying out design ideas was not for the faint-hearted. We survived, and eventually we arrived at the idea of a super-minimal site (he wanted Flash) whose homepage was based on Brendan’s own photography, but sparked by an ActionScript-driven aurora. It gave a sense of serene and mysterious beauty that set the tone for the rest of the site.
We worked with lots of multi-level expanding panels to keep clutter to a minimum, but preserving a nice sense of “touchy-feely” interaction with the user. We were delighted after go-live to see such a glowing response from fans - as they can often be the hardest to please.
As an extra, we decided to give Brendan a Yahoo Maps guestbook so people all over the world could plant their comments… although still in development, this feature has been a great success, and we plan to release it in our forthcoming store, albeit in a different (more flexible) form.
Part of the launch was handling a large-scale e-newsletter solution, doing the mailout and managing the distribution of a special free download of Brendan’s first solo concert at the ICA, London in 1993. This was a real gem for fans.
The site was, once again, built and tailored to Brendan’s needs using our “Backstage” content management system, optimised for creative sites.
Some more screenshots:
