Evaluation

In what ways does your media product use, develop or change forms and conventions or real media products?

When looking at the conventions used in the website we used for my research, we took note of some of the more effective ideas for my own website. From the research of “FRANK”, we felt that the conventions on their homepage were very effective, having drop downs for the all of the A-Z of drugs, we felt that this is effective because it is a very easy way to follow the homepage, this has a positive effect on the audience because it is a easy layout for them to follow and understand, instead of drop downs, we used images as links, this helped portray a clearer view and make the homepage easy to navigate off and find the specific pages you’re looking for. We used a very basic easy layout on all of our pages, having the navigation bar at the top of every page with all the links being available for use. I feel that these conventions on our page are very effective because it is very easy to follow and understand and also gives a great deal of information for viewers. I think that these conventions are effective for the viewers because it looks very impressive on the page and is very easy to follow. The conventions we used when using text conventions, we felt that it connected with the audience because it is a font and language that is easy to read, but also not too formal and fitting in with the campaign website style and format.

How does your media product represent particular social group?

We feel that our website supports most if not all demographics, we used a drugs campaign website because it was the most popular choice of websites from a survey and a drugs is a topic that effect everyone of all ages and gender, so when making our website, we tried making sure that we covered conventions for all demographics. The Demographic we target most though is young males and females of all ethnicities of young ages, being between the ages of 16 and 30, because from our survey results, that it was at these ages, drugs would be the biggest issue. Being a campaign website, we used a very simple font, being Gill Sans, this being because it’s a very easy to read clear font that doesn’t clutter up a page and can still represent youth because of its fine line style of writing. We uses informal language when deigning our website so we would be able to connect to the audience better and not make the website too confusing for people, trying to befriend the audience and make them feel welcome when they read information off our site. When designing our website, we used our survey results to help us design our pages, using the most popular colours and positions chosen to make our website as popular and successful as possible.

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

When first distributing a website, it is first seen to be more than it actually is, anyone who has made a website can publish one, doing this makes the site look very professional, authentic and established, making the audience more likely to like and believe in your site. Sometimes a small organisation can be hard to see as an institute but also be seen as more approachable and trustworthy. The website we had made is part of the web revelation from self publishing as its starting ground, self publishing is third party barriers to publishing are done way with, making things published on the internet for very little money, and making a slow progression from a small organisation to a large institution, just like the website “www.Amazon.com”. To become an institution, we could also use advertisements, taking advantage of other sites, using them to advertise ours and be able to receive more viewers to our site, becoming more trustworthy and approachable.

Tomas Noad

Who would be the audience for your media product?

Looking at our survey and our website research, these gave us a lot if ideas and help making our website target our audience of young adolescence. We tried to make this clear by using attractive graphic fonts which are easy to read and catch people’s attention. We also tried to making the title appealing to the audience, by using a name that will be easily recognised by audiences “BRAINSTORM”. We felt that this was a good title because it stands out and is clear about what the website will be about. It is also a name that our target audience can relate too, this is because it is different and there are many images and other organisations that may use that term or a similar term to describe drug users and the effects. When choosing our demographics, we decided what type of audience we were hoping to target and then using our survey, we used our results from our survey looking at the results from people from our audience and designed our website around these results.

How did you attract/address your audience?

To attract our audience, we used many different techniques in our website; these consisted of colours, words, language, font sizes. We used these techniques because we felt that we would get a positive reaction from the audience because we tried to make these conventions relate to them as much as possible. When designing the website, the colours we used us mainly bright colours consisting of Blues, reds and greens, we did this because we felt this because our survey results showed these being the most popular answers from our range of target audience. They related to the young audience and also to the topic of drugs; they are bright standing out colours. When writing the information we used very small amounts, keeping the information short and simple, making it very easy to understand and read, this followed by using very simple language, using some slang terms for some parts, so people of all ages can read and understand the information. The font sizes we used was very large for the titles, making them the centre if the page, so the web page topic was obvious, and the font sizes we used to the information was 12/14, to allow us to use a lot of information but also allowing us to make sure the text was big enough to read.

What have you learned about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

While going through the process of both of my websites, I personally have learned many new skills and techniques, and especially through the main website. I have learned how to make a website for a start, starting off as a beginner was difficult, but I picked up the skills quickly, being able to add images and other applications to my site. I also learned how to create slideshows and a video presentation through “final Cut Express”, using this for both of my sites. The main improvement and skill that I have, learned over the two websites, is the use of” Photoshop” I have learned how to crop photos, recolor them, and add effects to them, so that they match the style of our website. We also leant how having a relationship with the audience is very important, making sure that we related our layout and conventions to our target audience, because then we would be able to make sure the audience find our website attractive and will enjoy viewing our website.

Looking back at preliminary task, what do you feel you have leant in the progression from it to the full product?

Mt attitude and approach to website design has changed dramatically when coming to the end of my main website because I feel more in control and more confident when using the software. All of the

Tomas Noad

skills I picked up during the course of the year have improved, this is due to growing experience using the different software’s for my website, these being “Photoshop”, and “final cut express”. I am now comfortably able to record and video or take some pictures and edit them in any way I wish to make them work for my website whether it was the school site or the main one. I feel that my progression has shown over the course of the year because when we compare my two websites, they both consist of images, videos and slideshows but the main website has more effect s, these being things like fades, blends and cut a ways on “final cut express”. Although I have learned many practical skills, I have leant about knowledge of audience, this is knowing about what the audience want in a website and knowing what your target audience want from your website, I have learnt to use my survey and use the results to make sure I get the best of my audience which I feel I didn’t fully get from my preliminary website, so I advanced from that, using as much as I could from my survey on the main website, and looking at some of their reactions after I had finished it, I felt that me and my partner had made the right decisions in design as we had positive feedback.

Tomas Noad