DREWspective

http://www.betweenlines.co.uk

One of my real friends from uni had the idea of starting an e-zine. Wanting to be part of something grassroots, authentic and underground, I offered my support and skills; the above link is the result.

Let me tell you guys: the whole process—idea to implementation—took almost a year. Along with my other projects, like The Ignored Board, my own portfolio site and the long-awaited return of BadSoft Inc., it was, quite frankly, a nightmare to design and build.

Note that I’d said in the introduction that my friend had the idea for an e-zine. Initially I was aware that it was a music e-zine, but I had always been confused about the direction of the proposed site.

• What kind of music would it focus on?
• Was it going to be a hobby or commercial site?
• What kind of content would the site have?
• Who would be writing on it?
• What kind of audience?
• What kind of "feel" would the site have?
• What would the site be called?

Nobody knew the answers to these questions, until the bullshit was finally cut after months of talking. I’d decided enough was enough, and started to build a potential site. That’s when the answers came flooding in. (Some of you web developers, and probably even people outside new media, probably have an idea of what happened next.)

After a few months of designing then redesigning the site, with no blueprint or concrete idea of what direction the site would take (and for a while, not even a name for the site), I finally came up with what you see here:

Luckily, this design went down well with other people interested in the site.

If I’m honest, I’m not too keen on the name Between The Lines; a quick search on Google, or your favourite search engine, reveals a number of different sites with the same name, and very similar domain names, which would make it near impossible to gain a good search engine ranking. We were very lucky to find betweenlines.co.uk, which was probably the only combination left for sale.
I have a dislike for cheesy web site names: you know those ones where they pick two words out of the dictionary at random, stick them together and you have a name like moonfruit, facebook, gymgit, lemonsquid etc. Instead, I would have gone for a long, one-word site name for a music e-zine, which would be more memorable and hard-hitting.

There’s yet more work to do on the site: I eventually found out that the site will focus on art as well, as evident by the links for art and a gallery, as well as a music player and reviews section. Fortunately the site runs on WordPress, which is highly customisable and will hopefully be up to the challenge.

This project could have been less painful if it began with a clear direction.  Even when working on my own projects, I fall into the trap of not having a direction to move in.

But how many people, groups and companies embark on directionless projects every day?

How many project "leaders", managers and bosses order people around, when they have no idea what’s going on themselves?