Q7. What Do you think you have learnt in progression from your preliminary task to the full product?

From starting my preliminary website earlier in the year I have learnt to carry out things differently in my fully produced charity website.

After our first task to create a website for a school, I feel my skills have come a long way. Simple things such as working out how to use the program Photoshop and IWeb have helped my second website develop.

Things such as the layout have to look proffessional with the same template used on all the pages stopping the website from looking messy or not inviting. Simple things like a navigation bar at the left hand side of the page gave the website a more professional look. We were able to include a variety of different hyperlinks which was different to what our preliminary website had. Also to add to the professionalism of our website we used pictures which were of high quality with the help of the programme photoshop. I feel as I have got used to using all these programmes that the end finish of our website is at a high and professional standard. Especially as the audience is based on people donating or giving help. This is our template used on every page:

The colour scheme has worked well thought out and everything on the website has to be in contrast and look professional. Even the position of images, page links and the description on each page must be planned out properly. I am proud of Louisa and I for our progress in developing our charity website. I think it's a good first attempt at building a website and we would find building another one much more straightforward. Now that we understand the conventions and how to use the software, we could be much more creative and work much faster on the next project.

Q6. What Have You Learnt About The Technologies From the Process of Constructing This Product?

By using a web design product to create my media product I have learnt to do several things that I have never done before, as I am new to the "iweb" software and the Macs.
"iWeb" is an Apple software program created to help design fully functional website and is known as WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) software because you only 'design' the site, you don't have to learn how to work the html code although if you can you can do a lot more with the site.

New skills that I have learnt include photoshoping images and text to make my website look more professional and to stand out more as a fully functional working website. I was able to crop and edit all my photographs and I was able to make my logo using PS.

I have also learnt to create a website from scratch, using no templates and deciding on my own structure and colour scheme related to my campaign - Babies and young children. I have also learnt that planning your website and designing the details before definitely helps when it comes to actually designing your website.

I was also introduced to Final Cut Express while designing this site as I had to edit the video.

From this project I was able to develop my skills in PhotoShop, iWeb and Final Cut software and learn how they work together to create a complete package. I was also able to learn how to use blogger and upload my research for regular feedback from my teacher, the 'client' for the website. Of course I also developed my web research skills and ability to present work creatively for this level of project. I still think I have more to learn though.

Q5. What Kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

A website is usually produced by a website designer either working alone or as part of the marketing division of a larger corporation. In this case the charity 'Babies in Need' would probably use a creative company who would take care of the domain name registration and the web hosting for them, through a third party. The creative company may also be employed to regularly update and maintain the site as this would not be part of the charity do on a daily basis. The site would be distributed via the World Wide Web and would be hosted on a server for a monthly or yearly cost. The charity could also pay extra to have the site come up in particular searches on Bing or Google. Babies in Need isn't a large or complicate site so it would need minimal space so the costs would probably be quite low in comparison to the costs involved in distributing by more traditional methods.

Q4. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Louisa and I designed our campaign website to help disadvantage and abused young children so this is the social group we are trying to represent on the site. Most people know of a child/baby who has been affected or they have their own personal experience of being abused as a child, so my website is to further raise awareness for everyone about what is happening to young children and babies and to help put a stop to it. There are also many websites supporting this which Louisa and I have studied.

All the pictures that have been added to my website are young children, shown by Louisa’s younger sister photographed at different ages, representing children who have been abused and who we have helped and given a new life. There are pictures of her when she is sad and upset, but also happy after we have shown to have helped as a charity and saved from an abusive and violent background. On our website layout we used bright colours as this is a website that helps young children, and so we wanted to connote a happy atmosphere with in our organisation onto the website making them feel as comfortable as possible.

Some people might expect that a website like this would have images to shock people into helping people such as those used in the NSPCC adverts but after carrying out our research we realised that campaign sites used positive iconography to show how they had helped victims rather than showing the victims before their interventions. I think this is because people visiting the site will already be interested in the charity and know the issues, so the site is a place for a more positive atmosphere to provide more information and thank people for ebing involved.

These are some of the images I used in my website to represent a child whose life has been changed due to our charity and donations -

Q3. How Did You Attract/Address Your Audience?

As we wanted to attract women who either have children or who are at the age where they could have children, we have used a professional looking and conventional media product to attract them. We believe the name of the charity is a key way of attracting the target audience because 'Babies in Need' is very specific.

Young children are also part of our audience because we would be aiming to run events that they would get involved in with the support of their parents so it was important that site was also appealing and accessible to them. They are attracted to our media product because of our friendly pages and layout but mostly our multiple colour scheme.

For our colour scheme we used multicoloured page links shown above, and the title was also multicoloured, matching the page links.

The target audience are also encouraged to use the site because they know that their details or money given to donate is strictly confidential.

Different images of Louisa's younger sister have been used with permission to catch an adults eye and to represent the children they are about to help. We used pictures from when she was a baby until now to show how she has developed happily with our support.

We used emotive and persuasive language on all pages with a direct mode of address, which also attracts the children because they are persuaded by what they see and what they read.

The video placed on the home page features Louisa's sister on a swing and we are still hoping to add music behind that which will further evoke an emotional reaction to the site. We have used scrolling facts in the video to make our audience aware of what we do.

Q2. Who Would Be The Audience For Your Media Product?

Louisa and I have mainly focused on aiming our website at female parents or females with disposable income. From our survey we found that this is the social group most likely to get involved and/or contribute to a charity like this. They are also likely to be quite conservative Daily Mail readers who would appreciate a traditional design as supposed to something which was trying to be original. Thinking about the target audience in more detail they are likely to be from the both socio-economic groups ABC1 and C2DE because the profile of someone who gives to children's charities is more likely to be about the type of person they are rather than their educational and economic background. They are probably 'carers' who like to make a difference to society and small children who may be depending on this money to give them a chance in life.

Q1. In What Way Does Your Media Product Use, Develop or Challenge Forms and Conventions of Real Media Products?

Our website is for the fictional charity "Babies in need". It supports young children at more of a disadvantage than any other children. Using conventions of the genre, it looks fairly convincing as a professional campaign site.

The first thing you notice when viewing our website is the colour scheme as it stands out most of all. We used bright colours to attract the female audience and represent the issue. Our society associates these bright pastel colours with children and childhood so like professional sites, we had thought about the connotations of our colour design. The logo below demonstrates this effecive use of colour however we recognise that we could have added a few more layer styles to the logo in PhotoShop to make it look more professional. We could've used a slight drop shadow for instance to lift the logo from the page so it didn't look so flat.

Images were very important to our campaign site and these are central to the iconography of all campaign sites. Four images have been used of children smiling, at different ages, signifying that our charity has helped make these children happy. We have also used a video on the site to add interest but this could have been encoded with more meaning, linked to an event perhaps or a true story with testimonials.

Another convention of all websites in the navigation bar and ours has been placed vertically on every page, in the same position, so that visitors on the site can get around easily and very importantly, find key information and how to donate. What makes a charity site stand apart from other sites in terms of genre is the labels on those navigation bars - the campaign site will conventionally have, 'donate' and 'how you can get involved' or 'events'. To add interest to our navigation bar we used multi-coloured rollovers which would help the site visitor keep track of where they are on the page and also make it more interesting as an experience.

"http://www.childreninneed.co.uk/ " was the website we based our design and ideas on. Our media product is not quite at the level of a professional site such as "children in need" but we feel that we have used conventions of the genre effectively to make our site recognisable as firstly a website and secondly a campaign site. It also meets audience expectations because it can be navigated easily and all the links work demonstrating effective design and IT skills.


In my point of view "Babies in need" does not challenge conventions of the genre because the site needs to fulfill a specific objective which is to raise money and awareness. If we were to play around with conventions we would not be making an accessible site for our target audience who are expecting a traditional site. If the site was for teenagers we would be able to experiment a little more but we had to be 'safe' n our design to ensure we met our brief.

Website Distribution

Web Hosting -
Web hosting is a type of internet service that allows individuals or organisations to make a website and for it to be accessable through the World Wide Web. They provide a server as well as internet connectivity in a data centre. Web hosts can also provide internet conectivity for servers they do not own in their data centre, called colocation.

Domain Name -
A domain name is a an identification label that defines a realm of authority or control on the internet, based on the Domain Name System (DNS). Domain names are also used as simple identifications that are easy to remember to numerically addressed internet resoures. This allows the website to be moved to a different location globally, on a local intranet or in a network.

Survey Results and Audience Profile

Figure seven - Most Popular Charity?

Figure eight - How often do you read newspapers?

Figure Five - Gender

Figure Six- Relationship Status

Figure Three - Nationality

Figure Four - How much do you earn a year?

Figure Two - What are the websites viewed for?

Figure One - Popular Websites

Our survey results will help us to choose which charity to produce, from our results we see that most people would donate their money to 'Children In Need' so we based our ideas around that.

BBC and Facebook were the most viewed and popular websites so we will making 'Babies In Need' accessible through both of these websites, fundraising events will also be posted.

The Mirror is the most popular viewed newspaper so we will advertise or get some coverage in this newspaper as this would raise awareness of our charity. Females were shown to view charity websites more than men, so we have planned our colour scheme to target women more than men.

survey

website analysis

Website Brief

Louisa and I have named our charity 'Babies In Need', based around 'Children In Need'. We will use colourful layouts, with multicoloured page links, and rollovers, also a multicoloured title and a bold 'donate' button that attracts people who visit the website.

Looking at the website for 'Children In Need' we noticed that they have the same 3 column layout on every page, so we used that idea to make our website look more professional. They also used the background, different coloured polkerdots to look more inviting to children, their colour scheme is based around these colours which we have also used for our colour design.

We will photograph Louisa's baby sister with her parents permission, at different ages to make her look like different children. We will use lots of photos on every page to attract an audience and represent the children which the charity is helping. This will be a persuasive technique to communicate to the audience that 'babies in need' is making a real difference in their lives.

Functionally, our website will be easy to navigate with carefully labeled hyperlinks, such as the donate button shown below, which links to the contacting page giving ways of donating easily, also the details.

Louisa and I designed this using Photoshop and made it so it would stand out and attract people to the donate button. A bold font in capital letters draw in visitors to our charity and make them donate to us.

We will have 4 pictures of babies on the right hand side who we've helped thanks to our charity. The title is very bright and bold too. And the 'please donate' button is very bold to try to persuade people to donate. The pages on the left have all been colour coded to the colours in the title. We chose to have all different colours as this to us suggests babies and shows a happy atmosphere that we wanted to portray with the website. We chose to have all text in plain light grey boxes as its a simple and easy design. simple designs without harsh outlines can make the big difference to our website, we learnt this second time round after creating our preliminary website that didn't look real.

Review of Media Studies

When I first started the course I quickly became familiar with what it was that we would be studying and took a great interest in it.

I had a faint idea of what we might come across in the course such as the study of films, adverts, magazines and newspapers. Also the breaking down of what films include, the complexity of music, stunts, shots of the camera and the way the camera moves.

The first piece of media we studied was Hollyoaks, this went well for me and I felt I had a general good idea of how things were constructed in the series. Creating my storyboard was the most successful chapter of work but writing the assessment came across as more of a challenge and this is one peice of work that I would like to show more understanding in, take more time on

or edit some parts of it.

After watching parts of the DVD Casino Royale, I have understood the detail and effort that goes into completing a film and how complex the music and sound was for this film. Also how sound is sometimes diagetic and the actors can't always hear what the audience can hear. This is to make the scene have more emotion for us as an audience.

Gone Fishing is also a short film which we also studied as a class. I was most impressed with the camera work and how such a simple film could become famous around the world considering how short it was.