The brief I have chosen for my advanced portfolio is web-based and the criteria is to create a website for a new TV channel which must include a minimum of three hyper-linked pages with original images, audio and a video extract. Combined with the website I had to create a newspaper advertisement and a double page spread for a listings magazine, as part of a promotional package for the channel’s launch.
I started my pre production by researching all aspects of the project to get a thorough understanding of the brief and to give me inspiration for my initial ideas. I divided my research into four sections; TV Channels, Existing Websites, Newspaper Advertisements and Promotional Double page spreads.
I had already decided that I wanted my TV channel to cover a broad genre spectrum (focusing on music, sport and reality shows for this project) and be targeted at young people much like MTV . From this I researched similar TV channels including Nickelodeon and Channel 4 ad looked at the their audiences, channels and their individual styles. I also explored various details and researched information that didn’t immediately seem necessary such as statistics and when their first advert was launched, but these helped me to understand the company and it’s values and messages. By looking at these channels and their sister channels I was able to get an insight into a wider audience and I learnt about how hard it is to make an audience loyal to your product in this industry.
I took my task of researching existing websites and broke it down into sub-tasks which covered; Music, Sport and Reality TV channels.
To link in with my first lot of research I looked at MTV and 4Music’s websites. I analysed the websites presentation, house styles, use of colour, interactive features and language. I then evaluated the website as a whole noting it’s strengths, weaknesses and things I wanted to use in my own work. Some of the points I learnt were that simplicity is most effective, contrasting text means it’s easier to read and there as a strong coloration of advertisements which related to the website genre.
I followed the same critical analyse template as I used on the music websites for the sport focused TV channels.
I found these seemed to tend to be very boyish with stereotypical ‘boy’ colours such as black, grey and blue and language to fit male conventions. The advertisements were less relevant to the genre unlike others I’d looked at.
When it came to looking at tv channel websites which specialised in reality tv, I couldn’t find any. However, I know channels such as C4 and MTV cover this genre so I felt like I had done sufficient research in this area.
I also struggled to find newspaper advertisements and double page spreads which focused on tv channel launches. So I decided to look at these products in general and came to decisions on marketing techniques and ideas which I had got from existing products and memories of such adverts.
The newspaper advertisements were bright, bold, clear and attention grabbing. Because of the online age newspapers can be made up of up to 75% advertisements meaning companies fight for the reader’s attention. Based on this research I started to sketch out my inital advert design which was mainly an image with a little bit of text advertising a TV programme. The image was going to be a back piece tattoo which stood out and attracted a young audience and I wanted to keep text to a minimal so has not to be overwhelming and detract focus.
With the promotional advertisements I looked at fashion magazines that I had hoarded up in my bedroom because I’d previously seen good examples of this type of advertising and found it very effective. I found that they usually related to the magazine and almost fooled the reader into thinking they were reading another article whilst instead they were being unknowingly targeted with adverts.
The first issue of my construction I tackled was the logo. This was very important because it was going to represent my website in every product they published. This meant it had to be strong, memorable and define the company. After coming up with a series of names I thought were suitable I took this to people I had assigned as market researchers and surveyed their favourite. The most popular was Edge which then became the name for my TV channel. I did a similar thing with the fonts, I included some information about who my product was targeted at and a little about it. From my feedback I chose the most popular font and added to it to create my logo.
My inital plans for my website were to create my website using Microsoft Frontpage as this is something I had worked on before, but the first thing I wanted to make was an interactive navigation bar and after trying various ways and failing I decided to work with Macromedia Dreamweaver. This proved to be a lot easier and I could carry out complex and professional looking tasks on this software compared to Frontpage. A worked on some of the minor pages before creating the homepage.
Another big change to my website when I decided to drop the sport section and change it to food. I made this descision when I realised I wouldn’t have been able to get the images I wanted of extreme sports. I think it would have been something to I could have done with more time, but because I had other things to do aswell I decided this was the best idea. I chose to use food as it is very accessible and also breaks conventions as you wouldn’t normally connect food tv with younger people, although I think it would be nice.
My website does look different from my drafts, but there are alot of elements that are the same, such as the graphics and interactive features. A lot fo new things were added and original ideas expanded as I worked more with Dreamweaver and found moer thing that I could do with it.
The flash video I made was another idea I came up with during my construction which I decided to use as my embedded video. I used information I’d gained from my research to tailor it to my website theme.
Another specification of the brief was to have audio in my website. I sourced this from a copyright free music site and chose music that I thought sounded modern and fitted the website. After viewing the website with the audio I think it was the right choice and it is upbeat and works well. Unfortunatly I struggled to find much music that worked and was copyright free which didn’t sound tacky, but the one I’ve used isn’t too bad.
For the newspaper advertisement I created a tattoo backpiece using Photoshop. I started by trying out various tutorials and blending techniques which led me to decide I was going to use the darken blending technique and warp the image to the shape of the body. The backpiece image was made up of a self portrait of myself and small graphics sourced from the Internet. I kept the advertisement simple with a block of colour half covering the image (with low opacity so you could see through it) and some text. This was the same as my intial draft and the idea I’d had from the beginning.
My double page spread was planned out after deciding to have a food section in my website. I based the promotional spread on this and using research of double page spreads I made it so that it looked like a recipe in a magazine, but was actually an advert for a programme on my tv channel. I took the burger images myself by actually following the recipe and making them, documenting each part with a photograph. I then edited one of the final pictures to make it look appetising, which involved painting a lot of it so that it was a more commericial colour.
Overall, I’m very happy with my products and I think they link in together well showing consistency. It uses laid back language and images to appeal to a young audience. I also took into consideration stereo types in genre and because I want my tv channel to be targeted at both sexes I tried to keep it neutral paticualarly the colours. However, since changing the extreme sports section to food I think the website as a whole would be more suited for females. Keeping neutral means that I haven’t set a strict boundary for who can view my products making it easier for a wider audience to be involved.
Compared to existing tv channel websites my product is a lot simpler and less overwhelming. Out of the ones I looked at for research I think it is the most similar to 4Musics website.
