Week 5

At this point I decided to look at other advertisement sites, so I can get a general idea for what to include in my website in terms of layout, design and content.

One site that I found was http://adsoftheworld.com/

From this site I can see that a simple layout and design works best, so it doesn't distract the viewer from the advertisements being shown. The use of grey seems to work well with all the other colours present, and the basic font is simple but effective.

Another site I looked at was http://www.adverbox.com/

This site also had a simple layout and design, and also used a monchrome colour pallette. I also liked how these sites included both images and video advertisements and are layed out in a simplist way.

Proposal -

Concept

The aim of this project was to design a small- scale website, which in some way explores McLuhan’s ideas that “the medium is the message” or “the world is a global village.” To begin to come up with an idea for my website, I started by looking into Marshall McLuhan’s ideas surrounding the changes in society in relation to the media.

Following this thorough research on McLuhan’s dictums, I found on his official site a page titled ‘McLuhanisms,’ which summed up through quotes the majority of his ideas. Whilst looking through these quotes, I thought about how I could incorporate these statements into a website, and through the process of elimination I decided to form a website based around the quote “All advertising advertises advertising.”

When I read this quote the first thing that came to mind was to have my website include a number of advertisements and campaigns that don’t appear to be promoting the product the intend to, or show any relation to the brand there advertising.  Instantly I thought of ‘The United Colours of Benetton’ campaigns, as I have previously been interested in their advertisements, so it motivated me to complete more research on similar advertisements.

Another campaign that highlights McLuhan’s ideas is Diesel’s ‘Be Stupid’ campaigns, which reaches out directly to their target audience of the younger generation, by basically telling them to do what they want and ‘be stupid,’ whilst informing them to buy their product. This campaign in particular reaches out to the target audience I am to have for my small-scale website. The target audience will be male and females aged between 15-35 from a western society, who would be familiar with these or similar types of advertisements. Firstly this younger generation spends a considerable amount of time interacting with different media forms. Therefore I intend to include on my website images, videos, music as well as interactive pages. Primarily I aim to keep this website more of a visual experience as that is how advertisers mainly reach out to their audiences (viewers), also the target audience here will most likely be interested in visual media, graphics or art in general.

In relation to McLuhan’s dictums this website revolves around the idea that “the medium is the message.” This describes how often the medium influences how the message is perceived. This is evident in so many advertisements and campaigns of today as over time advertisers have needed to push the boundaries in order to promote their products. Often, it seems that the way in which the product is advertised becomes more ‘powerful’ than the product itself, which is the idea I am to highlight through this website.

Project timeline

Pre-production

·         Week 5 (28^th Feb) -This week the proposal will be completed, which includes a thorough description of my ideas and intentions.

·         Week 6 (7^th March)- I aim to have decided on my colour themes using the Kuler website, as well as decided on which fonts to use and also the layout of the website with a rough design of the home page/ intro page completed, including selecting which logos to include.

Production

·         Week 7 (14^th March) - By this week I intend to have completed the homepage (including selected the sounds a graphics) created using Dreamweaver or Flash.  

·         Week 8 & 9 -During these weeks I aim to have collected all the research needed and decide upon the order and exact layout of the 5 pages. I will then at this time work on the 1^st and second page, which may involve images, videos and external links and will probably be based around a well-known example.

·         Week 10 (4^th April) - For this week my objective is to complete the third page which will more likely include a range of advertisement that relate to McLuhan’s idea. These will be represented in a number of forms including images and video, therefore I will incorporate the use of appropriate programs dealing with embedding and HTML for example.

·         Week 11 (11^th April) - At this point I will continue to complete the 4^th page, which at the moment involves the viewers to become interactive on the site. I will have to use an appropriate program to create a series of around 5 multiple choice questions. The question for all will be along the lines of “what is being advertised?” and the viewers will have a number of answers to choose from.

·         Week 12 (18^th April) - By this point I plan to complete the 5^th and final page, which includes contact details and therefore will include a number of links to other websites. At this point I will also ensure on all pages that I have included appropriate and correct links to external sites.

Post-Production

·         Week 13 (25^th April) - For this final week before my hand in date my intentions is to ensure that everything is working correctly in terms of links, videos, sounds etc. I aim to make sure everything including fonts, layout and structure is easy to follow but still appeals to the computer savvy target audience that the site is aimed at.

·         Week 14 (2^nd May) – At this time the project will be completed and ready to be presented and to go live on the web. I intend to have a basic plan of how I will present the website and hopefully be prepared enough to respond to any questions.

Product description

Home/ Intro page –

For the home page of this website I aim to keep it visual (though basic) as that primarily is how advertisers reach out to their audiences. For the main part of the home page or intro page, I plan to include a number of small boxes which will show advertising logos i.e. Coca Cola etc. Then to make it more interesting for the viewer and to get them involved, I have decided to underneath each image include a letter, which would then spell out McLuhan’s quote “All Advertising Advertises Advertising.” Therefore when the viewer scans the mouse across each icon from left to right it will enable them to read the phrase. Also underneath I could include a paragraph explaining my intentions for this site. Additionally this page will include the links to 5 other pages.

Page 1 (Titled ‘McLuhan’) –

For first page I intend to explain Marshall McLuhan’s ideas around advertising and how he feels generally that ‘the medium is the message.’

Page 2 (‘Benetton’) –

For this page I plan to concentrate on a specific campaign or advertisement that is recognisable, more likely the United Colours of Benetton campaigns. As they represent the idea of how the images/ advertisements have created the recognisability of the brand, and not because of the clothes of products themselves that made the brand Benetton become better known. This page will probably include images and descriptions in relation to McLuhan’s ideas.

Page 3 (‘Examples’) –

Here I most probably will have links to a few pages that will have other examples of advertisements that follow this theme. It will most likely include about 3 examples one of which will be Diesels ‘Be Stupid’ campaign, in the form of an official video clip involving a number of ‘Be Stupid’ statements.

Page 4 (Titled ‘?’ to intrigue the viewer) –

In regards to the forth page I decided to get the audience/ viewers of the site to be interactive by having them try to establish what the selected advertisement is trying to promote. The reason for this is, generally advertisements today involve the public to be interactive to an extent and to think and work out its meaning, so therefore i tried to incorporate this idea of the viewer interaction into my website.

Page 5 (‘Contact’) –

For this final page I will include ways in which users of the site can contact me, through links to sites such as Twitter and Facebook as well as my email address.

Flowchart

 Wireframe

This is a rough guide of the layout of my website -