The July edition of Net Magazine is out now and I’m in it! Considered the premiere print publication for web design and development professionals, Net Magazine is read every month by thousands of designers and developers worldwide.

The design challenge is a regular feature which shows how different designers approach a design solution for a single theme.

This design challenge involved creating a website for a fictional music festival.

My analysis of the competition suggested that the central core of the music festival website the band lineup was frequently the least developed part of the site. My solution was to show how a comprehensive planner could help maximise their time to see all their favourite acts particularly for big-field, multi-stage multi-day events.

Big-field multistage multi-days festival need serious planning from the gig-goer to get the best experience and see all your favourite bands and it’s surprising how many festival websites still present the lineup in the static “poster” format.

The basic element of a festival website from a content architecture point of vie is the stage slot. So you know that at 22.00 on the Friday night it’s the headliner. Invariably though, lower down the ranks substitutions will occur and replacement bands will be drafted in to fill any vacated slots.

By focussing on the time slots this site would help the festival goer to plan - they can instantly see which bands are clashing across the festival site and work out the best way to get from the main stage to a tent on the other side of the field to catch the new indie young hopefuls. The idea here is to help the festival goer to maximise their time and see as many bands as possible, by selecting their favourite bands the system will automatically put them in the correct order, give an approximate “travel” time between stages and even allow to search for options for any gaps in their schedules.