The buzz around Music on Demand by du, “yeah du’s got some new service for downloading music”, “why iTunes ain’t opening the shop for Music in UAE, du did that, and Nokia too”. All this got me to visit du’s website. I’m there and looking for a link to “Music on Demand”. Can’t find it any where on the homepage.
Being a web-head, first thing I did was typing www.du.ae/musicondemand, no luck. Tried musicondemand.du.ae, no. So I went back to du.ae’s homepage. Ah I get lucky there’s a 3,4 second rolling banner that I have to be lucky to see before it shows the next slide. So I clicked on it, it redirected me to a press release for “Music on Demand”, you joking? I’m a user, not a reporter. So I had to read the press release to find the link somewhere in the article. The worst part is the link looked exactly like this: www.du.ae/MyWorld. But anyways I clicked on it.
You want to show me a service you take me to its press release page? Just, why?
This is so not “du”. That was my first impression on the service before even thinkin’ of using it. Because everything done on the page was unprofessional. Back in the last two years I used to give example of du’s website for information architecture and how usable it was, and most remarkably how it connected the brand and went online with it, all intact.
This portal? Not du to me, that’s dunt. I’ll tell ya why! First let me explain something out here. If all this was seen on a start-up’s page, some guys in a garage or workin’ from home, that’d be forgivable because they can go wrong given they’re resources might be tight and limited. du though, can’t go wrong. No excuse! du ain’t a 10K-capital company, that’s why! So if I was du, I’d be ashamed, because if I was du I could afford professionals.
Here’s some.
Branding
This is the part that shows it’s a team that cannot relate to anything design. Why? I can bet on it, the designer didn’t have a look at du’s Branding Guidelines at all. Reason? None of the type-faces used are correct, nor the style of type used. The only things used out of du’s brand is the Logo, and the color pallete, and that’s it. It doesn’t feel du. While I’m not a du insider nor ever worked on Brand du, creatively du is one of my favorite brands that were born in UAE, that’s why it feels odd when you find it going down the toilet with such an awful artwork/development.
Identity Crisis
They call the service “Music on Demand”. Though you don’t see that name anywhere on the page! No where! Literally no where! Check these awkward details.
- Page title(what appears on top of the tab & browser window) is “du” and only clean “du”.
- Subdomain is “content”.
- Website Logo is “du”.
How am I supposed to know what this is called or get this programmed in my mind? How are you working on the awareness? How would anyone identify this other than being a du service which doesn’t feel like it?
This website doesn’t only drift from du’s brand, but this service has identity crisis too. The page doesn’t know what this service is called.
On top of the page, they called it “My World Beta”. Get your act together. Decide, is it “My World” or “Music on Demand”. With all the ads and branding activities couldn’t du invest in a brand for its new service? I don’t know, personally, I’m disappointed at du.
And the cheap part is how skewed, pixelated, and how badly images are resized. I mean they are artists and musicians, get some good photos or resize them well. Man! Such a cheap work.
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One Comment
1 Tariq Al AsiriI wrote:
i agree with your post. It seems to me that music on demand project was a side deal. unless you read the press release you will never reach to this newly launched service.