Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Evaluation
The media products I have created are a four page website for a new TV channel, a double page spread for a listings magazine and an advertisement for a newspaper. I decided upon the theme of a children’s nature channel as there are a number of adult channels such as the “Discovery Channel”, however television seriously lacks in terms of children’s educational channels. This inspired me as young children tend to be fascinated by wild animals because it is new to them. My channel is aimed at very young children from the age of roughly 5-8 year olds, I have chosen this target group so that I can aid their education through the introduction of a variety of different animal based programmes, as well as keeping the content fun and exciting.
Producing a new television channel can be very difficult and complex, therefore I had to research into current functioning channels and their websites to get an idea of what goes on behind the scenes in children’s programming. The other channels I had a look at were:
Disney Channel
The Disney channel is clearly aimed at an older target audience than mine will be however, it shows a variety of different programmes which can be aimed at younger or older children as well, for instance, programmes such as “Lizzie McGuire” and “That’s So Raven” target older children, perhaps from about 11 upwards as they involve teenage girls and their troubles at school and in life, which relate to the audience who would be roughly the same age with similar problems.
Disney’s website is very interactive which will keep its users entertained throughout their visit. There are a links to all of the different programmes that are featured on the channel which allow children to go onto individual character profiles and learn more about the programme via the internet. It is also a very colourful website, however, Disney is known for it’s colourful approaches even in it’s movies and programmes, this also helps to keep your attention as the main theme of the website is a bright blue which is a very universal colour and has also been linked to the Disney channel for a number of years as it represents the night sky, featured among the classic logo of a princess’ castle.
Playhouse Disney
Playhouse Disney is a sub channel that originally began as a time slot within the Disney channel; however, as it developed its audience they branched off onto a separate channel that ran all through the day, rather than just having the early morning time slot. It features programmes such as “Little Einstein’s” and “Handy Manny”, these are both educational programmes as Little Einstein’s takes children on adventures through the different wonders of the world and Handy Manny tends to teach children about the do’s and don’ts of life, for insta
nce, on the website there are featured stories for Handy Manny which tell children that if they get lost they should stay where they are or ask a police officer or someone they know and trust to help them. The website for Playhouse Disney is also extremely colourful, more so than the original channel, as it uses a variety of colours with blue, green, yellow and pink. The main theme for the background is a landscape of a field which is a free and open space which again creates a sense of adventure for children. Again, the website is interactive with links to the different programmes that are featured on the channel and games and activities that can help the children’s learning.
CBeebies
CBeebies is another channel that is clearly aimed at very small children as the programmes, again, are built up of educational features, such as “Alpha Blocks”, “Big Cook Little Cook” and “Big Barn Farm”, these programmes all aid in children’s learning as they develop their skills at a young age. This website is also colourful and has themed backgrounds such as its current state being a park with a picket fence and a rainbow in the background; this gives a sense of fun and freedom to a child. The rainbow is also a prominent interest to young children because it is colourful and all children seem to adore them as it is colour in the sky, which doesn’t seem logical for a young child. There is a lot of colour coordination throughout this website so there are specific colours for the different sections, this helps children to understand and remember which parts are which and, again, all aids in their learning of what things mean, for instance they will associate “Song Time” with the colour orange and “Story Time” with the colour green as the main feature of that page will be the associated colour. .png)
These examples, among the others that I have also researched into (documented on my planning & research page), have shown me a few codes and conventions of the children’s channel that I seem to have abid
ed by. The main thing that tends to be extremely important is the educational branch of the programmes, both of the younger channels focus on teaching children about different and new things in fun and exciting ways, this inspired the creation of my main feature programme, Jungle Jim. It is also noticeable that these programmes have main characters that can relate to the target audience for example “Handy Manny” is a young boy and “Little Einsteins” features a group of friends, therefore the creation of “Jungle Jim” began. I created him as a young boy who wants to be an explorer, so I have made him small with big eyes to show his youth and excitement, also I made it so that his t-shirt has a red “J” on it which clearly shows that he is the 
main character and children will always be able to place him as Jim, the main blue of his shirt is also seen as a ‘boys’ colour therefore it helps to address him as a male character. The hat that I have drawn as his quirky little added feature is in the form of an explorer’s cap, the common place rounded bowl hat, this is generally placed as a feature of explorer’s among different imagery, therefore felt that it developed the idea of an adventurous young boy.
Also noticed from my research is that a variety of different bright colours are used among the younger targeted channels. Therefore I wanted to make sure that each page of my website had a different colour and theme towards it, a theme that was also relevant to each programme or feature. To aid my colour development, I did some market research into popular colours among young children, as I work at the chain store Argos, I asked 30 children what their favourite colour was, I was quite pleasantly surprised by the outcome as the majority voted green and blue which were the colours that I was hoping from the beginning to use towards my project, I was expecting a lot of blues from boys and pinks from girls however there was quite a mixture in opinion.
This helped me decide upon the definite use of blue and green for the main colours of my webpage, the green and blue was necessary for the two of my featured programmes on the product as green connotes the idea of a Jungle and wildlife whereas blue connotes the sea and underwater for “SeaLife”, therefore abiding by CBeebies colour coordination technique to help children associate colours with specific things, aiding their learning process.
I also found that the names of television channels are very important in helping the child understand what a channel is about and needs to be fun and catchy to keep them entertained and to make the name stick in their heads. For instance, ”Playhouse Disney” sounds, quite simply, playful and children love to run around and have fun, therefore they are instantly going to like the sound of the channel as it is enticing them into playtime. I came up with a few different names for my channel, a couple of which I was keen and the others I was not completely sure on, so I asked 10 friends which they thought would be the most appropriate, here are the results:
As you can see ZooLu was the most popular, one of my friends said “It sounds fun because all little kids love the zoo! I know I did”, as well as another quoting “ZooLu rolls off the tongue, I like it”. I was happy with this outcome because ZooLu was one of my favourites, as well as Jungle Vision, however that could possibly sound more like a programme name than that of a channel.
The video I have created to advertise Jungle Jim was also inspired by the other websites that I researched into. When looking at the various channels, they all had some kind of video on the homepage to feature specific parts of the channel or site, therefore giving me the initiative to follow this seeming convention. To link in with educational purposes I made the basis of the video a game where the children watching have a chance to guess what animal is being shown, whether it is a tiger, lion, bear or gorilla. This gives an idea of what the programme will be about and makes it a fun way to introduce the feature to its intended audience. I also had to find a suitable theme song for Jungle Jim as every programme has to have a catchy tune that will drum repeatedly into your head. I found one called “Great New Day” on freeplaymusic.com which was perfect and created a sense of adventure with its constant rhythm and upbeat tempo.
Since my website, poster and magazine have been completed I asked a number of friends and family to have a look at my products and give me any feedback that they may have.
channel itself.
To cr
eate my media products I used a variety of different technology to make it successful. The two programmes that have been the predominant feature of the creation of this project would be Dreamweaver and Photoshop CS3. I created the basis of the website in Dreamweaver, forming a series of absolute divs so that the page would be centred and would change to the size of the window when altering the dimensions of the web browser.
All of the artwork was created in Photoshop with a 600 x 800 pixels per inch dimension; this
was the basi
s of the main absolute div featured in the centre of my Dreamweaver page. As the majority of website and ancillary tasks were my own hand drawn artwork, I invested in a Wacom Bamboo Graphics Tablet which made it possible for my artwork to be drawn straight onto the Photoshop document; this made the process far easier than having to scan in paper drawn images and editing them afterwards.
I have also used InDesign to upload my listings magazine and poster into an Adobe PDF so th
ey can be viewed and printed as they would be shown in their final state. I saved it in a High Quality Preset and have made the bleeds and marks visible so that it is evident that they are being saved for print and publishing.
I also used the classic word processing programmes, Microsoft word and excel, to document my research and findings in an effective and easy to understand layout, involving pie charts and bar graphs which are shown earlier on in my evaluation.
Producing a new television channel can be very difficult and complex, therefore I had to research into current functioning channels and their websites to get an idea of what goes on behind the scenes in children’s programming. The other channels I had a look at were:
Disney Channel
The Disney channel is clearly aimed at an older target audience than mine will be however, it shows a variety of different programmes which can be aimed at younger or older children as well, for instance, programmes such as “Lizzie McGuire” and “That’s So Raven” target older children, perhaps from about 11 upwards as they involve teenage girls and their troubles at school and in life, which relate to the audience who would be roughly the same age with similar problems.
Disney’s website is very interactive which will keep its users entertained throughout their visit. There are a links to all of the different programmes that are featured on the channel which allow children to go onto individual character profiles and learn more about the programme via the internet. It is also a very colourful website, however, Disney is known for it’s colourful approaches even in it’s movies and programmes, this also helps to keep your attention as the main theme of the website is a bright blue which is a very universal colour and has also been linked to the Disney channel for a number of years as it represents the night sky, featured among the classic logo of a princess’ castle.
Playhouse Disney
Playhouse Disney is a sub channel that originally began as a time slot within the Disney channel; however, as it developed its audience they branched off onto a separate channel that ran all through the day, rather than just having the early morning time slot. It features programmes such as “Little Einstein’s” and “Handy Manny”, these are both educational programmes as Little Einstein’s takes children on adventures through the different wonders of the world and Handy Manny tends to teach children about the do’s and don’ts of life, for insta
nce, on the website there are featured stories for Handy Manny which tell children that if they get lost they should stay where they are or ask a police officer or someone they know and trust to help them. The website for Playhouse Disney is also extremely colourful, more so than the original channel, as it uses a variety of colours with blue, green, yellow and pink. The main theme for the background is a landscape of a field which is a free and open space which again creates a sense of adventure for children. Again, the website is interactive with links to the different programmes that are featured on the channel and games and activities that can help the children’s learning.CBeebies
CBeebies is another channel that is clearly aimed at very small children as the programmes, again, are built up of educational features, such as “Alpha Blocks”, “Big Cook Little Cook” and “Big Barn Farm”, these programmes all aid in children’s learning as they develop their skills at a young age. This website is also colourful and has themed backgrounds such as its current state being a park with a picket fence and a rainbow in the background; this gives a sense of fun and freedom to a child. The rainbow is also a prominent interest to young children because it is colourful and all children seem to adore them as it is colour in the sky, which doesn’t seem logical for a young child. There is a lot of colour coordination throughout this website so there are specific colours for the different sections, this helps children to understand and remember which parts are which and, again, all aids in their learning of what things mean, for instance they will associate “Song Time” with the colour orange and “Story Time” with the colour green as the main feature of that page will be the associated colour. These examples, among the others that I have also researched into (documented on my planning & research page), have shown me a few codes and conventions of the children’s channel that I seem to have abid
ed by. The main thing that tends to be extremely important is the educational branch of the programmes, both of the younger channels focus on teaching children about different and new things in fun and exciting ways, this inspired the creation of my main feature programme, Jungle Jim. It is also noticeable that these programmes have main characters that can relate to the target audience for example “Handy Manny” is a young boy and “Little Einsteins” features a group of friends, therefore the creation of “Jungle Jim” began. I created him as a young boy who wants to be an explorer, so I have made him small with big eyes to show his youth and excitement, also I made it so that his t-shirt has a red “J” on it which clearly shows that he is the 
main character and children will always be able to place him as Jim, the main blue of his shirt is also seen as a ‘boys’ colour therefore it helps to address him as a male character. The hat that I have drawn as his quirky little added feature is in the form of an explorer’s cap, the common place rounded bowl hat, this is generally placed as a feature of explorer’s among different imagery, therefore felt that it developed the idea of an adventurous young boy.Also noticed from my research is that a variety of different bright colours are used among the younger targeted channels. Therefore I wanted to make sure that each page of my website had a different colour and theme towards it, a theme that was also relevant to each programme or feature. To aid my colour development, I did some market research into popular colours among young children, as I work at the chain store Argos, I asked 30 children what their favourite colour was, I was quite pleasantly surprised by the outcome as the majority voted green and blue which were the colours that I was hoping from the beginning to use towards my project, I was expecting a lot of blues from boys and pinks from girls however there was quite a mixture in opinion.
This helped me decide upon the definite use of blue and green for the main colours of my webpage, the green and blue was necessary for the two of my featured programmes on the product as green connotes the idea of a Jungle and wildlife whereas blue connotes the sea and underwater for “SeaLife”, therefore abiding by CBeebies colour coordination technique to help children associate colours with specific things, aiding their learning process.I also found that the names of television channels are very important in helping the child understand what a channel is about and needs to be fun and catchy to keep them entertained and to make the name stick in their heads. For instance, ”Playhouse Disney” sounds, quite simply, playful and children love to run around and have fun, therefore they are instantly going to like the sound of the channel as it is enticing them into playtime. I came up with a few different names for my channel, a couple of which I was keen and the others I was not completely sure on, so I asked 10 friends which they thought would be the most appropriate, here are the results:
As you can see ZooLu was the most popular, one of my friends said “It sounds fun because all little kids love the zoo! I know I did”, as well as another quoting “ZooLu rolls off the tongue, I like it”. I was happy with this outcome because ZooLu was one of my favourites, as well as Jungle Vision, however that could possibly sound more like a programme name than that of a channel.The video I have created to advertise Jungle Jim was also inspired by the other websites that I researched into. When looking at the various channels, they all had some kind of video on the homepage to feature specific parts of the channel or site, therefore giving me the initiative to follow this seeming convention. To link in with educational purposes I made the basis of the video a game where the children watching have a chance to guess what animal is being shown, whether it is a tiger, lion, bear or gorilla. This gives an idea of what the programme will be about and makes it a fun way to introduce the feature to its intended audience. I also had to find a suitable theme song for Jungle Jim as every programme has to have a catchy tune that will drum repeatedly into your head. I found one called “Great New Day” on freeplaymusic.com which was perfect and created a sense of adventure with its constant rhythm and upbeat tempo.
A convention that seems consistent throughout the channels websites that I did not abide by is the great use of interactive facilities on the pages. I wanted to focus the attention of my website on the imagery and the colours to draw the eye of my young audience. Personally, I feel that the bright colour and cartoon images create enough excitement and fun for a child and if you develop 
the idea too far it becomes too complex and makes it hard for a child to understand. Initially I was intending to animate a large proportion of my work, however, felt that it might overload the website a bit and ruin the overall quality of the piece, therefore, I left it as the logo being the only animation as it is fun and quirky and can be a static feature for every page rather than a mash up of different images moving about on every page, this would create too much for the eye to see at one time. If I had the time to create this product realistically and professionally I would, most likely, add in a few more videos to introduce the different programmes, as well as activity pages for each, similar to that of Playhouse Disney, as I think that this is a nice way of introducing new ideas to young children and keeps them interested and makes it far more fun to play around on the website itself.
The three products I created, being the website, listings magazine and poster, are three different ways in which to advertise the channel that I have created. Each of these products are effective in different ways because they reach out to a variety of people, the website is aimed predominantly at the youngsters that ZooLu TV is targeting, where
as the listings magazine and newspaper advertisement will be focusing on the majority of an older generation, this is because young children are not likely to be reading these types of literature, therefore it will be targeting parents and family, gaining their interest in the channel for their children. I have linked the themes of wildlife and animals into my advertisements so that they are still eye catching, for instance I have focused on the colour green as it connotes the idea of nature, which instantly lets the reader have an insight into the basis of the channel. The main images that are used on the poster and magazine spread are the logos for the programme titles, as these are cartoons in themselves. From looking at other examples o
f listings magazines it is clear that there is a great need for programme information, allowing a description of the content of each feature, therefore I have written a short paragraph about three of the main programmes on one half of the spread. This lets the parents decide whether the channel is suitable for their child and if they like the particular programmes being featured then they can refer to the programme listings on the right hand side of the spread to see what times they are being shown. The poster also uses similar logos, however, showing the main programmes.
the idea too far it becomes too complex and makes it hard for a child to understand. Initially I was intending to animate a large proportion of my work, however, felt that it might overload the website a bit and ruin the overall quality of the piece, therefore, I left it as the logo being the only animation as it is fun and quirky and can be a static feature for every page rather than a mash up of different images moving about on every page, this would create too much for the eye to see at one time. If I had the time to create this product realistically and professionally I would, most likely, add in a few more videos to introduce the different programmes, as well as activity pages for each, similar to that of Playhouse Disney, as I think that this is a nice way of introducing new ideas to young children and keeps them interested and makes it far more fun to play around on the website itself.
The three products I created, being the website, listings magazine and poster, are three different ways in which to advertise the channel that I have created. Each of these products are effective in different ways because they reach out to a variety of people, the website is aimed predominantly at the youngsters that ZooLu TV is targeting, where
as the listings magazine and newspaper advertisement will be focusing on the majority of an older generation, this is because young children are not likely to be reading these types of literature, therefore it will be targeting parents and family, gaining their interest in the channel for their children. I have linked the themes of wildlife and animals into my advertisements so that they are still eye catching, for instance I have focused on the colour green as it connotes the idea of nature, which instantly lets the reader have an insight into the basis of the channel. The main images that are used on the poster and magazine spread are the logos for the programme titles, as these are cartoons in themselves. From looking at other examples o
f listings magazines it is clear that there is a great need for programme information, allowing a description of the content of each feature, therefore I have written a short paragraph about three of the main programmes on one half of the spread. This lets the parents decide whether the channel is suitable for their child and if they like the particular programmes being featured then they can refer to the programme listings on the right hand side of the spread to see what times they are being shown. The poster also uses similar logos, however, showing the main programmes. This links the poster and magazine together as they feature the same variety of images, showing that they are clearly the main highlights of the channel. Also, on the listings magazine, I have included a “Movie Magic” feature. I felt it was more appropriate to include this on the double page spread because I was then able to write a synopsis for the movie, this will attract a wider audience because parents and families will enjoy sitting down and watching a movie together, it is much more appealing than just watching a series of children’s programmes throughout a whole day.
Since my website, poster and magazine have been completed I asked a number of friends and family to have a look at my products and give me any feedback that they may have.
A few of these comments prove very useful towards the development of my product if I were to further my creation of it. The majority of criticisms focus on the vague content of my piece, to justify this I have tried to keep the use of great amounts of text to a minimum because children will get bored if there is too much to read and take in at once, therefore I wanted to build up my website on images so that they can enjoy it more. However, it is clear that there is hardly any information as to what the programmes are about on the website, the images and video give an insight into the programmes but in some cases this may not be enough to aid an older child or adults understanding of the channel. Therefore, if I was to develop the product further I would have to include more details about the programme itself for each section. Also, as mentioned earlier I would have liked to have made my product more interactive, this would have given a more creative way of introducing the programmes and would give a greater amount of information into the“I think the website is really good. It’s fun and colourful which is good
for a kids website.” – Anonymous friend
“The webbie doesn’t have much info on it. I like the pictures and colours though, they’re really cool.” – Luke Bates
“I like the listings magazine, it’s so creative and it has the information too.” – Elaine Bates
“The magazine could do with showing more than just 3 programmes” – Thomas Kanani
“The poster is vague but it’s good” – Connor Tillett
“It’s all different colours and I love little Jungle Jim, he’s so cute. The poster is so good” – Tamsin Hudson
channel itself.
To cr
eate my media products I used a variety of different technology to make it successful. The two programmes that have been the predominant feature of the creation of this project would be Dreamweaver and Photoshop CS3. I created the basis of the website in Dreamweaver, forming a series of absolute divs so that the page would be centred and would change to the size of the window when altering the dimensions of the web browser.All of the artwork was created in Photoshop with a 600 x 800 pixels per inch dimension; this
was the basi
s of the main absolute div featured in the centre of my Dreamweaver page. As the majority of website and ancillary tasks were my own hand drawn artwork, I invested in a Wacom Bamboo Graphics Tablet which made it possible for my artwork to be drawn straight onto the Photoshop document; this made the process far easier than having to scan in paper drawn images and editing them afterwards.I have also used InDesign to upload my listings magazine and poster into an Adobe PDF so th
ey can be viewed and printed as they would be shown in their final state. I saved it in a High Quality Preset and have made the bleeds and marks visible so that it is evident that they are being saved for print and publishing.I also used the classic word processing programmes, Microsoft word and excel, to document my research and findings in an effective and easy to understand layout, involving pie charts and bar graphs which are shown earlier on in my evaluation.
The internet has also been a great aid in my project, especially seeing as my main product is a website itself, therefore I had to use Dreamweaver’s preview in Firefox option many a time to see what my product would look like in an actual web browser when uploaded. As well as this, I have been using blogger to upload my research and planning along with the rest of my products so that they can be previewed online.
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