Thursday 10 December 2009

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.