Microsite
Client: Roland UK

Doesn’t everyone want to be a drummer? Roland reckons so, which is why they came up with the HD-1, an affordable, compact and easy-to-use electronic drum kit. It sounds great through headphones and will fit in a bedroom or an office with ease.

I was asked to design and build a microsite for the HD-1 within Roland’s main UK site. The thing with the HD-1 is that it’s aimed at getting people who don’t play drums to give it a go.

So the site needed to be separate from the main Roland ‘V-Drum’ pages, which would confuse beginners – and it needed to be super user-friendly in dispensing simple but comprehensive info.

The HD-1 is as much a life-style product as it is a musical instrument, so the feel of the site is very much along those lines. There’s a minimum of geekiness, a maximum of easily-accessible content, including the complete HD-1 instructional video and a faithful recreation of the HD-1’s control surface including sound clips of each available kit. Flash was the best solution for this site but it’s the layout that keeps the HD-1 the star of the show on every page.