EVALUATION - In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Before I began the planning process of my ancillary tasks, I undertook research to identify the conventions of the type of products I intended to create.

Website
For my website I created four web pages; Home, The Band, Gallery and News. From my previous research I identified the common pages within a band website. From here I could recognise the content and layout of each of the pages I planned to create. By undertaking this research I was able to create a website which consisted of elements that challenged and developed conventions of existing websites.

I identified that the home page of a alternative rock band website consists of the features of what can be found on each of the pages. Therefore I included featured such as news articles, upcoming tour dates and a hyperlink and hotspot to the image gallery.

In addition, I included a flash slideshow which includes advertising banners about their new merchandise, a radio interview and their new special album collection. I challenged this convention as this feature has been used in some existing websites, however I also developed it because mine automatically changes instead of ones that I recognised from existing websites which are controlled by the user by selecting the slide. I used this element to improve the attraction because the animation of the images catches the user's attention.

Here are some of the images that are a part of the slideshow:

Since the discovery of Twitter, a common convention of professional websites is social feeds from fans to the artist/band. I used this feature and included hyperlinks from each tweet display on the home page to the official Twitter website.

The majority of the websites that I analysed had the navigation menu located at the top of the page, in addition they consisted of rollover buttons to improve the interactivity that the user has with the website. I therefore challenged this convention and located my menu at the top and each of the buttons change background and text colour when they are rolled over. However, I developed this convention by included the menu at the bottom of the page as well as the top. This ensured extra navigation for the user as they did not need to relocate to the top of the page to navigate to a different page.

Navigation bar with rollover buttons:

Navigation bar at bottom of page:

In addition, I included a video of behind the scenes of their newest video which is a common convention of all website of our chosen genre. This improved the variety of multimedia features that my website had, therefore improving its interactivity.

My website consists of a professional layout as my image gallery contains images of identical sizes and are laid out in an effective way. I have also developed this convention by making each thumbnail a hyperlink which navigates to a larger view of the image. This improved the usability of the image gallery and enables the user to see two different views of each photo.

I developed the convention of including an image gallery by inserting an image slideshow to the page. This meant that the user had two different methods to view the images which also improved the usability of my website.

The image slideshow changes on a timer and loops six images:

For the news page of my website I alternated the colour of the boxes to distinguish between the headings and the article so that the content was clearly laid out. This makes it easy to read and understand because the users can understand what the different colours of boxes and fonts have been used for. In addition, to make the page look professional I have aligned all of the boxes and text appropriately so that it all matches and nothing is out of place.

I have also developed this convention by including images which link to the topic of the article. This improves the user's understanding and breaks up the large blocks of text.

For the header of the website I have used the font style from my groups style guide to display the name of the band and for the rest of the text I have used Ariall. This convention differentiates the text and establishes it as the band name. This was a common convention of real media texts as they have used logos or different font styles to distinguish the title of the band.

Here is the font I have used for the header which is located at the top of each of the web pages:

Bus Stop Advert

I learned that bus stop adverts contain little information and achieve advertising by stating the key details. Therefore I used a minimal amount of information to develop this convention by stating the key details which is the band name, the event and contact details.

I also identified that they use large text to make the key information to stand out the name of the business or brand is shown smaller. Therefore for my advert I have put the band name smaller than the text stating the festival that they are headlining at.

They also use the colours that are associated with the business or the topic of the advert. Therefore I used the

colours associated to the band and the colour scheme that me and the rest of my group established for our ancillary tasks. I used an effect that had colours similar to the dark grey/blue we have all used, in addition I used red and white for the text.

For realism I have included the reading festival logo, in addition I have used short tag lines to make the information clear and stand out.

This layout of information makes it easier for the user to quickly read because for this type of advert it needs to be short and to the point because if they are simply walking past they do not have time to read lengthy pieces of information.