Tanya Sokolovskaya's blog: posts tagged Daniel Lesden

Made a new Daniel Lesden logo

Sat, 13 Jan 2018 21:55:00 +0100

Task
To refresh the logo while maintaining its recognisability.

This is what the old logo looked like. The work was done by Serbian designer Nebojsa Nadj in 2012

The main element of the logo is the DL abbreviation combined into a single sign. This sign is responsible for recognisability, so it should be preserved.

The logo is often used on posters, flyers, album covers and other materials full of colour and elements. That’s why I decided to use only capital letters. Then the logo will be well read. I choose a font that suits the “D” as much as possible:

There is a second letter “D” in the name. I immediately try to insert a sign in its place while cutting the serif tail:

Right now, the “D” is too wide compared to the other letters. Correcting this:

I also softened the ponytail and made it a little shorter:

Looking at the result:

Experimenting with letter spaces:

Adding ligature and spaces to other letters:

I’m putting together a vertical version:

The words do not match in width — bad. I add horizontal strokes to the letter “I” and lengthen the horizontal stroke “L”:

I don’t like it that way. I am expanding the letter “A”.

I align the spaces in the letters and take the “E” with a tail, as without it, a hole is formed between the “LE”:

A wide “A” solved the alignment problem

The horizontal version looks great too

I colour the logo in the company orange colour and sent it to the client:

Work accepted :-)

Design psytranceguide.ru

Mon, 07 Aug 2017 22:08:00 +0100

Task
Musician Daniel Lesden came up with an idea to make a little psytrance music guide and asked for help with the design. I did!
psytranceguide.com

Psytrance Guide is a site with overviews of the main sub-styles of psytrance. There you can read about each style, listen to examples, and learn typical tempo. It’s an educational and entertaining resource.

Since this site is a single page and assumes identical blocks, I sketched out the design partially and finalised it in the course of the layout. The work was done in one breath, even did not have time to save the evolution of design :-)

For the headlines, I found a cool techno font, it fits perfectly into the atmosphere, and I matched the font of the main text to it. Look at them:

The large factoid indicates the tempo, which allows you to quickly orientate and find the right style

The colours are dark, but with bright saturated headlines, which fits perfectly into the world of psytrance.

The site is adapted for mobile devices as well:

Members of the project

Design
Tanya Sokolovskaya

Layout
Daniel Sokolovskiy

Updating daniellesden.com

Thu, 16 Jun 2016 22:17:35 +0100

Task
Adapt the site to any screens.
www.daniellesden.com

Last November the third version of musician and DJ Daniel Lasden’s website was released. It was a big update, in which my team and I overhauled the structure and updated the style of all the pages on the site.

First version
Second version
Third version
Adaptive version

Still, the site had a drawback: its size was fixed, so mobile phone and tablet users could not enjoy it to the fullest. This feature had to be sacrificed for a while to launch the site on time.

Today I’m pleased to present an update of the site specifically for mobile users. Now the site smoothly adapts to any screen: phone, tablet, laptop or desktop computer.

Separately, I would like to tell you about the innovations in the “Tips” section. Listeners and site visitors send the author questions on DJing, music writing and other music industry issues, and he shares his experience — that’s how the advice section works.

Initially, the design of the section was in the form of a news feed — new tips appeared at the top, and old ones went down. Everything seemed logical. But the fact is that the author writes useful articles that do not lose relevance even a year later — it is pleasant to return to them again and again. And new users may not have seen some previously published articles, because they went far down.

The original design of the section as a timeline

At first, we thought to make a search on the page, but this solution didn’t fit — often new users don’t know what to look for yet, so they need help.

We split all tips by topics: music writing, DJing, management, marketing, and business.

But on what principle to display tips — alphabetically, by date? And the most important thing — will it help new users? And will not harm the regular readers? The direction with grouping seems right to us, but we continue to think over the implementation.

Thinking:

— What if in the groupings by topic, not all tips are displayed, but only the important ones at the author’s discretion? And show them in a beautiful magazine layout with large pictures?

— And how does that help?

— Very simple: this is how we help new users to orientate themselves in the rubric. Instead of flipping through dozens, and soon hundreds, of tips, it’s as if we’re saying “Here, start reading with this one”. The articles themselves are tagged and linked inside so that if the user likes it, he will go on reading.

— Where will the rest of the articles live besides these important ones?

— All other tips will be at the bottom of the feed, no change with this one.

— So regular readers will have to scroll down to this feed every time to see if new tips have come out??

— No: at the very top we will show some new tips first, this will be convenient for both new and regular readers. Next will be useful articles by topic, and even further on will be feeds of all the other tips.

Sounds great. Let’s get to it:

Assemble a mock-up of the proposed idea

Watching, evaluating and continuing to reason:

— Good overall, but the right-most element in these blocks is confusing — it feels like the large headline refers to it, not the large illustration.

— How about we solve this with a loading animation? The three lower tips in the blocks will appear a little later, helping to set the visual emphasis.

— How’s that??

— It’s like this:

The pod load animation helps to set the focus of attention

This decision is what went into the final version of the site.

Project members

Lead designer
Tanya Sokolovskaya

Designer and layout
Daniel Sokolovskiy

Developer
Maxim Silnov

The third version of www.daniellesden.com

Wed, 25 Nov 2015 22:04:09 +0100

Task
Refresh and improve all sections of the website.
www.daniellesden.com

It is easy to break something and build a new one in its place. It is much more difficult to take an existing product and improve every aspect of it with almost surgical precision. This was exactly the task: to improve everything without changing the overall style and look of the site.

First version
Second version
Third version
Adaptive version

In the new version, the structure of the site has been updated and almost all pages of the site have got a unified look — now they are more predictable and orderly. The changes have affected absolutely all sections of the site: the main page, biography, discography, radio shows, mixes, performances, press mentions and others. There is also a new section “Advice” — it’s a weekly column in which the author answers questions and gives advice.

And also the top menu on the site now smoothly hides when scrolling down the pages, and also smoothly appears when scrolling up. It’s great! Try it yourself.

Project members

Lead Designer
Tanya Sokolovskaya

Designer
Daniel Sokolovskiy

Developer and layout
Maksim Silnov

Second version of www.daniellesden.com

Wed, 25 Mar 2015 13:56:52 +0100

Task
Finalise all sections of the site and move the site to a new platform.
www.daniellesden.com

Daniel Lesden is a musician and DJ. As his popularity grew, so did the amount of content on the site, so it became necessary to expand the existing functionality. In total, more than 30 different changes were made, including a new platform for more convenient site management — in fact, we had to build the site from scratch.

First version
Second version
Third version
Adaptive version

Prominent call-to-action buttons appear on music release pages

There are also tabs for press, reviews and similar content

Press quotes right on the music release page

Testimonials from famous musicians

Materials from this category, such as remixes

The main page of the radio programme has also been updated

The mix pages now have attractive parallax images.

Photo albums are a new section on the website. Works and looks great on mobile phones too!

The press section can now be filtered by type of material: reviews, interviews and articles.

Interesting “404” page: typed 404 parameters on the midi controller display and Star Wars-inspired lettering :-)

Project members

Lead designer
Tanya Sokolovskaya

Designer
Daniil Sokolovskiy

Developer and layout
Maxim Silnov

Designing a website for musician Daniel Lesden

Tue, 26 Nov 2013 22:48:04 +0100

Task
Develop a musician’s website.
daniellesden.com

Daniel Lesden is a musician, DJ, and radio presenter. I developed a flexible and concise website design, allowing me to arrange all information about the artist: discography, radio programmes, mixes and recordings of live performances, news, photos, tours, press publications and much more.

First version
Second version
Third version
Adaptive version

Also made cosmic promo pages for the artiste’s album.

Project members

Lead designer
Tanya Sokolovskaya

Designer
Daniil Sokolovskiy

Development team leader
Maxim Silnov