Sound and Music website relaunch

We've spent some of our most enjoyable moments over the last few months working with Sound and Music to provide strategic direction and project coordination for the redesign of their website. So we were very happy to see the new website launch at the start of this week.

Sound and Music are a client very close to our hearts, representing as they do the cutting edge of contemporary and experimental music and sound art in the UK. They're the result of a merger between a group of organisations representing very different musical traditions (Sonic Arts Network, British Music Information Centre, Contemporary Music Network and the Society for the Promotion of New Music), and a whole thesis could be written about the significance of how those traditions are converging. You'll be relieved to hear this isn't the time or place for that. But it's worth mentioning because each founder member brought with it its own legacy in terms of values, content, audiences and approaches to communication. Redesigning SAM's website for the first time provided an opportunity to take a step back and really think about the mission, strategy and identity of the organisation as a now mature entity that is more than the sum of its parts.

We think the results are lovely, showing a real clarity of purpose which has been carried through into clean information architecture and design; and creating a framework that genuinely reflects not just what SAM stands for, but what it does and what it is able to generate in the digital arena, as a commissioner of new musical works, events and collaborations, and also as a producer of digital content such as podcasts, resources for creative artists and unique online features like this alternative history and guidebook to Sheffield.

The launch is the culmination of what has been a remarkably smooth project, one where Unthinkable Consulting took a role as strategic advisors at the start of the project, and have acted as coordinators throughout. Launching on time, in scope and to budget is always a good thing, but doing so in a situation where there are separate agencies for strategy, design and technical development is especially gratifying. It demonstrates to us that an approach that is open, trusting and collaborative on all sides makes handling complexity much much easier. In that spirit, it would also be misleading of us to claim all the credit for the success of this project. Everyone deserves thanks for the frictionless way that problems have been handled, but particularly Sound and Music's digital manager, David Rogerson, whose love of online collaborative tools, very cool head and big brain were the perfect elements for the manager of this project.

As I've repeated so often now that everyone on the project is bored of hearing it, I have never worked on a website design where the finished coded pages so closely match the original designs. (If you're unfamiliar with this problem, it's very easy for less experienced designers to produce designs that are near impossible to replicate in coded web pages; and even for realistic designs, coders often fail to come up with pixel perfect renditions of them.) The closeness of the finished product to the blueprint is testament both to the experience of Paul Finn of Fitzroy and Finn as the designer on the project, and the skill of Sheila Lawson and her colleagues at Platform 3, as well, once again, to their unusual ability to work cooperatively together.

Finally, our thanks to the wider creative leadership of Sound and Music for their discipline and light touch as the ultimate decision-makers on this project.