Bones Hillman WebsiteB

Project: Bones Hillman Website

Bones Hillman, a bass player of New Zealand descent and currently based in Nashville, Tennessee, anchored Midnight Oil's rhythm section and recorded 5 records with them over 15 years. Currently, he is a studio musician, but gets out on the road to support the work he has created with fellow artists.

Challenge:

Bones' previous website was built in Flash and not responsive nor mobile friendly. I approached him with the idea of recreating his site in a responsive fashion and with a focus on the breadth of recorded work he had done during his career.

My Role:

Web Designer/Developer

Previous site:

Bones' existing site was built in Flash which had some great features of him floating on his chair playing, but when it came to responsive design and the ability to view it across various screens, the site had it's limitations. After a discussion over several days, we came to the conclusion that a responsive site was needed in order to be more impactful.

Sketching:

I decided to put pen to paper and sketched out some ideas. The key was to have a one-sheet flowing website. What Bones didn't want was a site that needed to be updated on a continuous basis, such as having a section with his road dates. He found that not to be useful. Instead, he wanted a site that was robust with his recording catalog in order to bolster his talent, which would lead to more studio opportunities. Turnaround time and budget were tight, so we decided to purchase a template that I could peel apart and customize to his needs.

Solution:

The heavy lifting in creating this site was the discography. Each of these album covers rollover and state album title, band and release date. These were critical pieces to the success of Bones' career and the focal point of the site.

Final Product:

Once I made the site responsive, we needed to make sure that is was easily legible on mobile devices as well. Please visit Bones Hillman's site to see the final product.