PRIDE: Finally online and active

After working on the new NTU Pride website for several months, the new website, logo and brand image was launched on 15th February 2010 and it went off to a roaring success.

To celebrate the new branding, we had a massive house party where guests could watch a firework display, let off Chinese lanterns and enjoy cake and music.

I really wanted to bring a brand new image to NTU Pride, making it much more professional looking and making it stand out from the crowd, not blending in at all.

Through using the bright colours against the dark background, this has really worked well and will continue to look fresh and bright for years to come.

To see the website online now, check out http://www.ntupride.org.uk

In addition to the website, 2 large new banners were printed and various t-shirts were made too. As I'm on the committee for NTU Pride, I've been working closely with the bar, Propaganda to create a strong sponsorship and NTU Pride is now pleased to be officially sponsored by them.

Loose Women

Having been introduced to Loose Women from my boyfriend, I've become some what intrigued and interested by it.

It's interesting to me to see a program that's so successful being shown as day time entertainment. Maybe this is opening a new slot for a peak time or the show appeals as it's light hearted comedy that could be shown in waiting rooms in places such as Doctor's surgeries and hair salons for example.

A differing panel on each day of the week offers a fresh and appealing show that is always unpredictable and often takes the viewer by surprise.

I think the heart of the success in the show is that ITV have selected female celebrities that are not incredibly famous, and are therefore more like the average UK citizen. Through this, we as an audience are able to identify ourselves with them through the universal issues they talk about by giving candid opinions on subject matters that would occasionally be taken too far on an evening show, but kept to a good humorous level at lunch time.

Would the success of the show be the same with equally famous men? I highly doubt it. For some reason, I don't think this time slot would accommodate 4 middle aged men talking about their life experiences including the humorous sexual innuendos as the women manage to pull off. Instead, the show may come across as a dirtier show simply because it's men talking about their experiences and I can imagine a lot of middle aged men finding it hard to talk about similar subjects of interest in the same way, creating light hearted lunch time entertainment.

Overall, Loose Women attracts a massive audience and a good following with their ITV website which includes a forum for the audience members to get involved with and various competitions to keep the show uplifting and fun.

There's no doubt in my mind this show will go from strength to strength, it's just a shame they don't offer a Catch-Up service for the show on the ITV website.

9/10

My Own Website Online!

Well it's finally here! The first upload to my own website!
www.kidinacandystore.co.uk went online today with my Uni project to front the website.

Eventually the website will be re-designed and actually be relevent to me. At the moment, it's just a holding place until I know exactly the design I want.

Take a look and let me know what you think!

Website and Final Ideas

Here's the initial idea I have for a website.

After deciding to choose the online environments pathway, I thought it would be a good idea to experiment with making a website on photoshop.

The website will feature a timeline in the portfolio section for all the work i've done, under the year's I did them and then include a preview of each piece and my thoughts about it.

Having done this first idea, I think i'll use it as my 5th and final identities object.

So here's my final list:

AV -40 Min D-GEM Radio Clip

Logo -Speach Bubble

Avatar - Myself, now

MY CHOICE - "Bolt" Soda Can

MY CHOICE - Profile Website

SPP Research Task

Over the last few years, my creativity has been mainly for myself. I have created a lot of music videos of general things, such as going out clubbing and using the photos and videos with a song to make the event a memorable one. I have also used pictures and photos of when my friends have visited and put them into a music video for us all when we’re not together to watch and reminisce. I’ve also used my creativity in a theatre production for school where I created the entire backing video which was a prominent part of our show. I had to create a powerful and expressive video that was effective but simple enough for the audience to watch without getting too distracted. I’ve obviously also used my creativity in the work I’ve done. I devised a fruit juice advertising campaign, a mobile phone campaign and various other things such as a music video about a girl who’s abused in the relationship and nearly overdoses on drugs. I also managed to create an online radio station, but this was more business related as I not only had to choose between various website templates, I also had to organise and timetable the DJing times. I even created a video for my Mum as she had a party to commemorate the building of her new summer house. She asked me to film the day and then create a video for her, which I did. Not only that, I managed to create a stunning video of her garden in the summer, with extreme close –ups of plants and nature in her garden.My creativity has been done this way as I think it’s important to get other people’s views on things, such as the online station and the theatre production video. I like to take in other people’s points of view and then edit it to make a more dynamic production.In the future, I’d love to continue my hobby of making videos and taking photos as it’s what I’m really interested in. But as far as jobs go, I think I’ll have to go into something where I don’t take too much of a main role as a lot of media based professions require collaboration and once I have an idea, I like to roll with it, so therefore I don’t think doing AV for a career would be the best aspect for me. However, I do enjoy online environments; I just don’t know enough about it. I’d like to work for big companies such as Pixar in the virtual department but I’m not sure I have the right creative spark when it comes to character design. Therefore, I think online environments would be a good route to go down as I can still experiment with Flash, Photoshop and learn Dreamweaver
Research is going to help me get to where I want to go as I think it’s important to make an informed decision. Looking at how the internet is progressing, especially with Web 2.0 will be interesting to see. I also need to research how companies use their websites to promote themselves. The SmartCar website I reference below is a good example of this. I think I’m most drawn to the “Behind” aspect of researching. It’s a good idea to see what influenced the work at the time it was made, if we look at this we can probably tell why the website was made in a specific way. For example, websites made way back in 1997 would look very dated and simple, with a lot of “bad design” by today’s standards due to the advances in technology and the invention of Flash etc. I feel quite wary of the “In front of” aspect of research as it’s quite difficult to find out how people reacted to a website when it was made and put online as there’s so many websites and online environments that not all of them will be documented, unless you look at larger sites such as Google and creative sites such as The SmartCar one and social sites such as Facebook. “In/Through” seems the most irrelevant of the research aspects as I don’t really think it’s important to look at how it comes together. In a lot of creative mediums, it can be very experimental and there’s no logic to why it’s done the way it is, it just works because it looks good and is functional.