Evaluation of portfolio
In this evaluation I will covering four main topics, in which are about the creative process and experience of creating the products. I was asked to create a website for a new TV channel and also newspaper advertisement and animated Ident sequence so now comes the time to look and evaluate them as a whole.
Forms and convention
The website
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| Fig 1 |
The first topic I will be covering is the way my website develops and challenges forms and conventions of a real websites. The main convention of websites is about the layout and structure, the main homepage should be bold and easy to see and use however I feel it should also be bright and exciting to draw the viewer and not to bore the viewer in which is including things that will attract and interest the audience such as the video of America I have included and the interactive comment area, allowing the user to leave a comment.
The conventions I have followed of layout in a conventional website (fig 1) is the logo in the top left corner, this gives the page and website an identity however I have further developed and used this convention in also including the logo a second time on the opposite side in the right corner this is in order to assure the page defiantly has an identity and is defiantly noticeable. One thing I found about conventional websites is also that the website is consistent on every page in things like layout and especially with the colour scheme; this is why firstly the logo appears in the same place on every page but also secondly the colours scheme of red blue and white appears on every page. The reasoning for these colours is that these are conventional colours associated with America and are also the colours on the American flag.
The colour scheme I have used is appropriate the forms and conventions of the website as I have also done In the layout, this website is consistent in which consistency is a main feature of conventional websites, it keeps the website together and as a whole.
Also conventional is the main pages first impressions, as the homepage is the first page you see then it should be the most eye catching and have the most important information on it but also things to keep the user looking at the site, the whole idea of this website is to advertise a new TV channel using the website so the main page has things that are associated with the theme and topic of the website
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| Fig 2 |
on the modern film page i have included a spry tab to display the main purpose of this page in which is the films. this is good because it stands out and i have challenged the convention of colour scheme of a paticualar page, the red and white are the same however the centre piece to the modern film page is green, i have done this to make it stand out and to anable the reader to see it's the centre piece.
Animated Ident sequence
For the Ident sequence I created this in adobe flash, the typical convention of an animated Ident is firstly that it’s animated and has movement along containing some sort of sound whether it’s sound effects of part of a song. The Ident I created is not the best quality however is the best I could create with the software I had to hand. Although not the best I think the Ident matches the forms and conventions as it matches the website and channels theme of America and shows this theme in a number of ways such as the flags flying across the screen, American! The Ident follows typical conventional indents in the way it is presented. However it also challenges the conventions in the way there is a lot happening at the same time, in conventional indents, one object will move then another and then another or just one object will move with everything else stood still, however when I have created this Ident I had challenged this and made all the objects on the stage move around at the same time, and finally it follows conventions as the timing of the Ident matches the beat of the music in the background.
Newspaper/magazine advert
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| Fig 3 |
The newspaper advertisement (fig 3)is designed using Photoshop and is designed to advertise the TV channel, it contains the same colour scheme in which is conventional for all products associated with each other to follow colour schemes. The advertisement also has to meet the requirements of the magazine it will appear in, as a rule advertisement of this nature will contain a lot of information such as the channel number it’s on, written information about the channel. I found that these can be slightly off putting and have decided to go against this convention and include limited information, this will also make the reader be more inclined to visit the website however I have not included the websites main address but the Facebook address, I have done this because Facebook is a well-known and well established social networking site.
Effectiveness of main product and ancillary texts
The second topic I am writing about is how effective the main product is and also how effective the ancillary texts are. My main product follows the conventions and forms of traditional websites as explained above however it also meets the requirements of the user and the brief. The brief was to create a new website for a new TV channel. This TV channel was to be an American film channel and all pages in this website reflects this, from the use of colour scheme to the images and videos’ used, the American theme is reflected throughout.
The two ancillary texts were firstly to create an animated Ident and a newspaper advertisement, with advertisement being the key word. These two ancillary texts were to “advertise” the TV channel along with the website. With advertisement being a large part of TV I had to think about the main ideas about advertising, what it’s for, who it’s for. The 2 main parts of advertising is professionalism and quality in the advertising. The newspaper advertisement holds both these parts.
all three of my products worked well and the effectiveness of them all alone is great, the effect of them all included as a whole is even better as they support the idea's and values they hold in relation to the value's the company and the new tv channel are trying to present
all three of my products worked well and the effectiveness of them all alone is great, the effect of them all included as a whole is even better as they support the idea's and values they hold in relation to the value's the company and the new tv channel are trying to present
Audience feedback
For the audience feedback I have asked people of all ages about my product and the ancillary texts and got some really good feedback about what’s good, what’s bad and what can be improved and maybe how it can be improved
The range of my feedback ranges from all ages, male and female. The feedback was generally that ”it Looks Really good, but the scrolling text and the moving competition animation in the middle of the homepage screen are a bit confusing, because there is no dominance trying to look at both things at the same time. I realised that Perhaps an improvement of this is to include just one moving object and the text as a block or as a graphic with a big heading and the beginning of the text and when you click on ‘read more…’ the rest appears.
The issue with most feedback when the audience are commenting on improvements are that they are just the general public and they do not understand the limitation to the software, they give brilliant improvements however are mostly inexperience in the creation of products like this.
Other things the audience commented on were the colour scheme, there were a lot of mixed comments, they best comment that shows both side’s said “The colour scheme obviously immediately relates to America, and though the colour is eye-catching it did take my attention away from the smaller things on the page.” I understand the comment made, but the main idea in websites is representation and although the colours are bright, I felt it needed the colours of America to be big bold and the main attention to get the theme of this product across. i obtained my feedback through the use of facebook and e-mails, by sending out a feedback form with all the links on it.
New media technologies
In the making of this product I have learnt to use a number of new technologies such as firstly hardware such as using different techniques with a camera however mostly I learnt new software such as adobe Dreamweaver to create the site itself in which I had no knowledge in using this program, so the first few weeks of implementing I spent learning the software using online help guides and other people’s knowledge to teach me,
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| fig 4 - programs i used |
The other main program I used was adobe flash professional to create the video’s to go on the website and to create features for the site and also to create the Ident, as I have used this program previously in another subject I had good knowledge and was able to use this program to the best of my ability. And this was the reason this program played such a big part in my project.
Apart from adobe Dreamweaver and flash I also used various other types of software to help me in the implementation stage, programs such as Adobe Fireworks and Photoshop. Although not direct in creating the product I used internet explorer. I interacted with all the software well and if I came across an issue I used online help files on the adobe website and other websites using internet explorer.
With Adobe fireworks I had little issues with the fact I had never used this software, I was familiar with what you can do in the software just not on how to use the features. I had chanced using the software on how I thought and guessing. So this took longer to do things but I finally found my way through and luckily I wasn’t using this software a great deal. I used this software because it had a range of tools to help match the criteria of some of the images; the main tool I used on this program was the transparency tool to make the background of images transparent so that they wouldn’t have a white or black border around them. However for the images the main program I used was adobe Photoshop which let me edit and manipulate the images, an advantage of using this software is that it allows me to get professionally looking good quality photo’s in which reflects on the products overall look. I used this program for the images because I have good knowledge of this software as I have used it many times before and I know its feature in which are good and were the tools I needed. However the only disadvantage of using this software is that it can be complicated and confusing to use and some of the tools are not as straight forward as they could be.
For the newspaper article I used Photoshop but I also used word to lay the advertisement out and to create the text for this advertisement, as this program is an everyday necessity for me I use all its features and am very familiar with all it’s features and means I can use it to the best of my ability
An advantage of using all different types of software means I have a range of different techniques and tools available to me and can get exactly what I need for the product.
A disadvantage of using the software is that it was a hassle importing them into Dreamweaver because with many objects I had to change the file format however I was only able to do it this as many of the features cannot be created through Dreamweaver .
