Introduction

This is my blog page which I will update weekly with how I have been adding to and improving my coursework. I will record what I have found in my research, my opinions on the tasks I carry out and details of my completed work - what I enjoyed, found difficult, etc.

Week One: 8th September

I have been introduced to the AS Media course where I will be studying Film - Institutions & Audiences. This week, we looked at the common codes and conventions of print ads; two examples are Yorkie and Pepperami, which both showed the product in some way, had relevant styled font and colours for their target audience and a tagline.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Week Two: 15th September

Having analysed a variety of food & drink print ads, we next planned our own food/drink product and print ad. We worked in small groups, I was with two other girls and together we brainstormed a smootie product for 2-4 year olds, as we didn't know of a similar, already existing product for this age range. We then created individual product designs and our own print ads for this product. I used the research of print ads to make mine effective and professional; using bright colours in order to attract young children and nutritional information to encourage parents to buy the product.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Week Three: 22nd September

This week we had to look at a selection of school websites, they could be primary or secondary, near or far. The point of this was to note the typical codes and conventions of a school website and report back to the class our findings. This is the list I made:

• School Logo (in the top left corner)

• School Name (to the right of the logo)

• House colours that usually matched the uniform

• A page on "news" or "announcements"

• "contact us" consisting of emails, telephone numbers, the school's address

• A gallery of images and some videos of life in the school and events

• "about us" which included Ofsted reports, a list of teachers and classes

• A School Calendar and list of upcoming Events

• An Introduction/mission statement from the headteacher with a picture of them.

• Some secondary sites had links to social networks

• Some advertised vacancies

• A search bar

• "parents" which directed the user to important information about the school, like its size and past success

• More logos (at the bottom) of awards and partnerships the school has

• Some had a "student area" or "documents" which was restricted to certain users and members of the school.

Many of these features can also be found in a school magazine, which I came to realise with my next task...

Following this research, we then compared school magazines in class and judged how effective they were based on colour, layout, font type, language and more. This step helped when we then came to analyse school magazine front covers. I feel that I added lots of deatil in my work and explored the use and effects of many features on each magazine.

Week Four: 29th September

The contents pages were harder to analyse as we had done less work on them in class. However I still included lots of detail and understood what worked well for the magazines by comparing them. For example a less professional looking magazine used "contents" as the page's title, whereas a more effective technique was to use "what's new" to engage the audience more. Weeks three and four certainly helped me during week five...

Week Five: 6th October

This week I evaluated my analyses and stated what I found out and how to apply this knowledge with my own magazine. I then drew plans for my front cover and contents page, based on the research I had carried out. Included with my plans are annotations as to why I intend to use certain features. For me, the most difficult part of planning my magazine's pages was creating ways to appeal to young children and parents; I added colourful parts to appeal to young children, but this broke the mature house colours I used in order to appeal to adults. However I feel my work so far is suitable, and successful as a first draft.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Week Six: 13th October

Setting up this website using Wix.com has been challenging at times; especially when adding images, the page can become confusing as things seem to be in a different place to where they are. Having said that, I feel I have been making consistent progress, in particular to this blog. Next week I will carry out more research and add photos of my work to this site.

Week Seven: 20th October

This week began with the planning and creation of a questionnaire, which I intend to use to gain opinions from my target audience. To do this, I must ask a number of primary school children (aged 7-12) of both genders. I have already carried out the questionnaire with my younger brother and cousin, their responses are on my research page

Week Eight: 27th October

During half term I have asked more children the same questions and taken some photos for my front cover and contents page. These can be seen on the "photos" page. I plan to take more photos in school next week.

Week Nine: 3rd November

This week I have started thinking about my plans in more depth; I have analysed what fonts are most appealing to my target audience and I have created a page titled "Analyses" to show this.

Week Ten: 10th November

The greens I have thought about are also on my Analyses page; I looked at five different shades and have decided

that the best to use behind my text is the second shade: light green.

Also this week we have looked at how to take "positive" photos; in groups, we took six photos of

our school, three portraying it in a negative way, and three showing is to be good. Here are our

photos:                

                                  BAD                                                                                                GOOD