Tuesday 23 March 2010


1. In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?


My website is a drug based campaign that aims to help people stop taking them. It advises people to quit the drugs and informs them of the side effects. There are already anti-drug campaigns and drugs awareness campaigns out there so I looked at them as part fo my research and planning. The two sites posted below are those I think most similar to mine and I studied their structure and iconography to help me make decisions about my own site. Drugs online had a simple design using a 4 column structure with a black navigation bar at the top of the page. They also conventionally had a clear logo on there but it wasn't top left as it normally is, it was top right, under the navigation bar.

Talk to Frank is a site that had a lot of promotion when it launched a few years ago. This is a site that challenges many conventions in the way that visitors can navigate around the page. It is not trying to tell young people not to do drugs, it's more about giving them information so they can be safe. It has an interactive A-Z of drugs and it has the latest news on legal issues. While both sites are different in their purpose and design, they both mainly follow the conventions of website design so I realised that while there are differences, the main conventions stay the same so site visitors can easily find their way around. I used these main conventions in my own site for easy navigation.



Like both of these sites, my website uses colour to make it stand out more so that people take notice of the message I am trying to get across. I made sure the font was an appropriate size and colour to ensure it was easily readable. I went with a grey and red colour scheme like the drugsline site because I wanted to connote that drug taking was a serious issue and not a game like it can seem from looking at the Talk to Frank site. The images and logo on my website were taken and designed by me. I followed conventions of some of the sites I looked at by using photos of people affected by taking the drugs but I realise that this isn't really a convention of webistes so I also used photos that would show how the campaign is helping young people.

Most professional websites use navigation bars to get around. The navigation bar on mine has been placed vertically downwards and placed on every page so that visitors on the site can get around easily. The hyperlinks on my website were also created by me. I wanted them to stand out as they are on the homepage, which is what you see first.