Evaluation

Evaluation – K1219829

During this module I have learnt to produce my own website during TB1 and learnt how to work and drive the team to the right path. Both terms I have learnt how to produce a website on Wordpress and produce many different multimedia products in a creative way. In the second term, I have done the same but this time I have been put into a group and we worked together as a team to produce our successful website together. However, there are some strength, weaknesses and things that I would love to improve as an individual and as a team.

My strengths are creativity, meeting deadlines and determined to improve. One of the reasons why I study Media Studies is because I am a creative individual and producing a website in both terms has made me express myself by producing two websites individually and in a group. Creativity helps me come up with new and unique ideas that I like to share with everyone. I am not a theoretical person, but I am definitely a person who likes visuals and this is why I think that is one of my strengths during this project. Meeting deadlines was perfectly fine as I was the project manager. Therefore I should give the same respect to my team as they will respect me by getting their work done on time as it is my job to push them to get the work done. My determination to improve is driven by competition that is surrounding me, such as other people who have produced fashion websites or friends that are also producing a well-presented website. This makes me determined to be better than everyone and to make sure I am ahead of everybody else.

The strengths on our website are quite a few. We have a lot of visuals which are images that have been produced after a fashion photo shoot. There are a lot of photos that have been produced and presented on our website, and it does lie within the concept of our website which is about fashion and photo shoots. The other best point of our website is the colour scheme. We went for a simple background (black), white font and a hint of pink to “spice” things up. We didn’t want it too simple, so we figured we should put a little pink to it.

Moving onto the weakness of the website, the weaknesses are time management, lack of different materials and meetings. The time management wasn’t too great as we all are juggling with other assignments on different modules. However, that wasn’t the big problem but the other problem was to find a make-up artist, photographer, director and models free on the same day. It was very limited time, and we did not have enough time to get enough material.

As Odd Form will no longer be part of our project, it still will be part of our own project as we are now part of Odd Form. This gives us enough time in the world to improve the website by producing different kinds of mediums such as videos, where we can produce teaser trailers for the next photo shoot or set a fierce mood by capturing action behind the scene with the techno music blasting in the background. We all still have amazing and unique ideas we would love to share and we will share in the near future.

Final Product

There are a few changes we have made with our website. Instead of having a lot of sub-categories, we figured out it is best to narrow our audience down and focus on one aspect which is about fashion photo shoots. Odd Form and the group have discussed what their aim is and they want to attract popular fashion blogs and magazines to make Odd Form popular and get the recognition they want.

The homepage is just a simple slide show that will direct the audience to the specific category they are looking for. Here you can see this is a beauty shot, which will direct the audience to 'beauty photo shoots' that has many different beauty shots on there.

Because this is a fashion blog, we narrowed the 'shop' down to 'clothing'. We do not have to list cosmetics and accessories, Odd Form is all about that odd clothing and that is what it is showing instead of filling up the spaces.

Process: Social Media

It is time to get the website some well deserved recognition. We created an Instagram, Twitter and Facebook account for Odd Form. However, we are mostly focusing on Instagram as it is a social network to express how you are feeling or want to share something with the world by using photos. Instagram and Odd Form have something in common! We have set an account on Instagram and posted quite a few photos from the previous photo shoots we had.

By gaining followers we simply hash tag our photos. For example, if there was an image of an apple we can simply add 'labels' so it can be easier for the audience to find it. To lead the audience to our photo we hash tag the image '#apple' or '#healthy'! If this gets a lot of views it could also become a new trend!

Planning: Meeting Dates

We have a couple of photoshoots that we have planned to do with photographers, make up artists and models. We also have times to meet up as a multimedia group without the 'Odd Form' group.  We have many things to do, as the project manager I need to make sure we meet on time so we do not leave anything until the last minute.

- Meetings with group:

• Discuss that everything is clear after the research and what we have planned for our website. 
• Discuss the times we are free to meet up with Odd Form.
• Give each person a task to do and make sure it is done by the end of the week.
• Keep updating the website
• Skype sessions at 8pm on Skype everyday for ten minutes to make sure team is working on tasks and support each other.

- Meetings with Odd Form:

• Book a time with the photographer, make up artist and models. 
• Discuss what sort of theme we are going for. Start to look for locations. 
• Accurate times to meet for photo shoot to avoid any delays.

Process: Scouting For Fashion

We all had this great idea to scout for good looking boys and girls with amazing, unique and 'odd' fashion sense! We hoped that the public would be nice about the fact we want to take a picture of them and post it onto our website to show the public what we mean by 'ODD FORM'! We went around Kingston Upon Thames with a lot of mixed answers. We managed to get only a few people to say yes, unfortunately no boys. Here is a sneak peak:

Research: Contents

Research: Contents

This is the most important and vital part of the website. We want to use as much content as possible as our course is a multimedia module. The concept of our module course is about the multimedia contents that will be used in our website. These contents will help us make our website to be interactive and have many different types of visuals to keep the audience inattentive.

• Text - It isn't only about whether the things that you read is written in a formal or informal way. But it is about the way it looks to the audience, the colours and font, whether it is easy or a hassle to read and whether is is comfortable to read or irritating. As mentioned before, there have been many websites we have looked at. Some were pleasurable to read, others have too many colours clashing. Not only that, but we need to have the font to be linked in with the theme that we have for our website. For example, if it is a friendly blog we need to link it in with a 'friendly' looking font, to invite that person to read. Or if the theme of the website is about a charity website we need to link the font with formality and not childish, so the audience can take this charity seriously. The way the text is visualised is very important along with the other contents in the website. We shall be looking for a 'professional' looking text to give the audience a professional vibe but the way we write on our fashion blog will have a friendlier tone to it. 
• Images - Most of the content that will be used for our website will be images. Why? Images speak a lot to the audience and creates stories in their heads. Images are also important to our theme as its about fashion, therefor there will be a lot of images showing these photo shoots, different trends to show the audience and images of make-up. 
• Videos - This will come in handy. We found a way of using videos. There are many ideas such as shooting behind the scene of a photo shoot, stopping people on the streets and ask for fashion dos and don'ts and edit some trailers to keep the audience entertained and keep them updated. 
• Audio - This is the hardest content to fit in our website as our website is about fashion and beauty. This would lay perfectly in other people's websites if it had something to do with music or travel. However this is beauty and fashion, we need to figure out how to use this content into our website. We thought we could have used a music playlist on our website, however it may annoy the reader as they might be listening to their own playlist or it may interrupt the videos that will be played. The audio will just be used in our edited videos such as pumping music for our trailers. Dialogues are under audio, therefore that is one type of audio taken care of such as models having a conversation on camera, or the photographer directing the models on film. Another type of audio that can be used are sound effects that could be used in our behind the scenes such as blooper moments. 

These contents will all be used in a creative and make it a unique thing for our website. This will be discussed before we start planning for our website. 

Research: Menu

Research: Menu 


There are different ways to make the menu on your website appear appealing to the readers. As a group we have discussed what sort of menu we are after. We need it to speak loud to the audience, flow perfectly and have many choices to pick from but at the same time avoid cluttering.

• Speak Loud: We want the menu to be bold in a subtle way. The layout of our website would properly be a very simple background however we want the name of our website (OddForm) to stand out by creating a statement. We don't want the menu and the name of our website (logo) clash with each other. The menu needs to be on the top of the web page and below the logo. 
• Go with the Flow: The menu needs to flow. What we mean by 'flow' is that we want the menu to become interactive in a way, flows perfectly and does not glitch. We want the menu to drop down a sub-menu for the audience to pick and choose what sort of category they are going for. 
• Choices to Pick From: We have five categories we want to put onto our menu, those are; About Odd Form, Fashion, Beauty, Extras and Shop. We still have to discuss the sub-categories for the menu that will break it down to different parts that are more in depth. For example in fashion, one of the sub-categories are 'Photo Shoots'. Fashion on its own is too broad, we wanted to narrow it down to some stuff such as photo shoots or blogging about trends. 

Some of the websites we have looked at in the past and present have been very helpful. We have looked at dozens of non-fashion and fashion websites. We have focused on the layout, text, images and material that has been used. The reason why we have focused on the layout is to see where the menu has been placed. We've looked at colours, whether the menu is responsive and what sort of sub-categories were on the menu. We have discussed the cons and pros of a menu on the website. We are becoming a step closer to figuring out the overall layout of the website, the menu and the sub menu. 

Presentation: PROGRESS

This is a Prezi Presentation that has been presented in front of the class for their opinion on the concept of our website. Here is a shared link to the presentation:


http://prezi.com/0xq08mmr85b2/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy&rc=ex0share

Process: First Photoshoot

We have managed to do our first photo shoot. The theme was related to darkness, fur and black leather. It was located in a park in Central London near Holborn.As a team we all went there to either model or capture being the scenes as it is part of the website. Our first material (images) have been uploaded onto our website and here are some samples:

Research: Design & Layout (HOMEPAGE)

Homepage 

This is our first research post on our blogs. This role is applied to Mari, and she has gathered a lot of websites for us to look at, analyse and come up with the pros and cons of the website. We all sat as a group, checked out the websites that Mari has picked and discussed it as a group. In this post I will be breaking it down into parts to explain what has been analysed, how it helps us with our homepage and what to avoid.

First Homepage: She Wears Fashion

This website that we have looked at is www.shewearsfashion.co.uk which is a fashion blog in the UK. The homepage of this website displays the recent posts that this individual has posted onto her blog. At the sides of this page are social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram that readers can follow and join for recent updates. On top of the page it is the name of the website, the individual's name and the menu. The menu has three sections; HOME, ABOUT and CONTACT.

We have looked at this homepage because it has something do with fashion and blogging. Our website will have a feature where the audience can access the blog side of the website where it will show the image of the outfit and a button to access the blog. This does relate to our blog, however we were thinking to put more sections on the menu such as a shop for the audience to access and behind the scenes. As this is just an individual that updates the website, we have a better chance to put more material and features onto our website as we are a group of three and work with photographers, models and directors.

PROS: Simple colours that are used are something that we are looking for. The reason why we want to use a simple design for our layout is to not clash with the fashion photo shoot pictures as models will be wearing different colours and will be placed in locations that may have colourful sets to it. This website's design is simple black and white to take the audience's attention from the colourful design and actually focus on the pictures. The way the social networks that have been placed are quite convenient as the audience are just a click away from the blogger's social media account.
CONS: There aren't enough features on this website. There is just a blog, about the website and how to contact the person. However, this is about the design and layout of the website. The only thing that bothered all of us are the way the right side of the website is cluttered with different shops to buy from, such as 'eBay' and 'New Look' which made us this is more of advertising other companies and not focusing on the material that is on this website.

Second Homepage: 

Roles

ROLES

In this project we have four different roles. Those roles are project manager, website developer, researcher and a promoter. I'll be going more in depth what these roles are all about, what is expected from these roles.

- Project Manager: This role is to manage the group as well as the website itself. The main purpose of this role is to direct the group, deal with group meetings, arrange events and organise time slots etc. For example, this role is to make sure everyone is updated with news, check if everyone is focusing on their part like researching designs, layouts and topics.

- Researcher: Primary and secondary research are very important in this project. We came up with the theme, idea and a rough copy of the layout of the website. The researcher's job is to analyse different fashion websites, test out different colours that go together, look out for unique ways to use materials such as visual texts and expand our knowledge in fashion, looks and trends. This research will put us on the right path to a successful website.

- Promoter: After developing and producing the website we need to promote it and it is a job to basically spread the website and keep the audience interested. There are many ways to spread the word to the public. The internet can be used to promote our website, and that place to go to are social networks that are available to everyone. These social networks are Twitter, where we can update our followers when there are new trends released on our website. Instagram to upload recent pictures to attract the audience and followers. To view the actual business, people that are involved and to contact us for business purposes on Facebook.

- Website Developer: This role's purpose is to develop the website from time to time. The developer can be accessed by any computer or tablet, which is a good thing as we can develop it anywhere and anytime we want to. The purpose of this role is to keep our website updated with materials, layouts, designs and interactions. This role is there to make our website better and keep the audience interacted and interested as we do not want to lose our audience.

Roles of Each Member: 

- Project Manager: Lobna
- Researcher: Mari
- Promoter: Lara
- Developer: Whole Group

We have discussed as a group that we will all have the role to develop the website. We all have creative and unique ideas for this website so it is ideal that we all have access to design the website. It would be less hassle if we keep contacting each other and asking for permission, however we do have a group on a social network to share ideas and discuss it.

Research: Accessabiltiy, Usability & Audience

How accessible is Odd Form?
Odd form will be accessible to all the audience with different genders and ages. Fashion trends, fashion photoshoots, beauty shoots, knowledge on fashion and a shop will be accessible to the audience. There are many choices that an audience can choose that is part of fashion. It is pretty much going in depth into the world of fashion.

Why is Odd Form useful?
Fashion and beauty is definitely a subject most girls around the world appreciate and are interested in that subject. However this could be useful to other people that have professions in modelling, photography and bloggers. This could also inspire some people who want to create their own fashion or beauty photographers.

We've done some research on audiences around our university. We have created a little survey that we will be giving out in a few days to some females and males in and out of university. The questions are:
1) What gender are you?
2) What sort of fashion are you into?
3) What do you expect from a fashion website?
4) What do you expect from a blogger?
5) Appearance is everything. What kind of appearance would you expect from a fashion blog?

The blog will be updated with the completed questionnaire.   

Research: Equipments

The amount of different equipment that is available to us at University is quite a lot of choices to choose from. We need the right equipment to produce high quality productions such as images, audio and videos. However, there are a lot of other basic equipments that will be used in the process.

Basic Equipments:
- Laptop: a personal computer will be used for updating the blog as we go along updating the website. It will also be used for research to gain knowledge in fashion, trends and designers as that will be the theme for our website. It will also be used to watch videos on Lynda.com to gain more knowledge about programs such as Adobe Photoshop, Adobe After Effects and to gain knowledge in WordPress.
- Mac: this will be used in University as they are available to use in the Mac Labs. This will be used for Adobe programs to edit footage and edit photos in Photoshop. This is the main equipment to use for website designs and updates as it is a bigger screen and more opportunities to multitask.
- Digital Camera: this will be used to take quick pictures of primary research, behind the scenes of photoshoots and to show evidence that we are working as a team.

Advanced Equipments:
- Nikon DSLR Camera: a more high quality camera than a budget digital camera that will capture the models in action. This is definitely needed for high quality photos to present on our fashion website. Unfortunately there are restrictions in the loan rooms at the university. We can only take this specific camera out if we are third year media or film students. However, we have contacted the photographer and she has confirmed she has her photography equipments that are needed for the shoot.

- Cam Recorder: we need one or two of these to capture behind the scenes while models are modelling and other tasks that are happening around the set. The footage that will be produced will be going onto our website, under the 'behind the scenes' where the audience can watch behind the scenes and what everyone's tasks are.   

- Recording Booth: if there are any produced videos that will need any voice overs this will be the place that will be used for the necessary equipments. The voice overs could be used for make up tutorials, presentations on the website that is related to trends, interviews with models and behind the scenes. This could be used for information, to correct an audio error in a footage and for other uses. 

Planning: Wireframe

In our last projects we have created our wire frame for our individual websites either on Photoshop or in Microsoft Word. We thought we would try a different format, an Apple iPad. We have used a software or an application on the iPad to draw out our wire frame.

This is a quick drawing of our front page after collecting the surveys we gave out to students. At the moment this has nothing to do with colours, but where everything is placed. We figured out we wanted a big image of a fashion photoshoot to stand out and it is there as a statement. The letters on top represent a category. 'A' is 'About', 'F' is for 'Fashion, 'B' is 'Beauty, for 'Extras' it is 'E' and finally 'S' for 'Shop'. These will be placed on top of the website and beside it will either be our logo 'Odd Form' with the word 'London' under or just a simple text. The background's colour will be darker than this as we are going for something plain like a canvas. However, white is too bright for our liking so we will be going for a black colour.

This just states what different categories there are on top of the page. We want a lot of space for the word 'Odd Form' to stand out and so the audience take a look at it.











This is an image of the menu that is broken down into sub-categories. This is about the category 'Fashion' and as you can see there are a couple of sub-categories such as 'Photo shoots' and 'Trends'. These are available for an audience that is looking for something specifically. Whether it is an agent or photographer that is on a look out for a model, someone that wants to get inspired or a fashion lover that wants to find out the next new trend that will be coming out.

Research: Audience

We have mentioned that we will be giving our a quick questionnaire or survey about fashion and what the audience are after. The sample of the survey is here:

We gave out twenty copies. Ten copies for each gender, so ten copies for females and ten copies for males. We have gathered the research and the outcome of the survey is:

- The sort of fashion everyone was into was unique and odd. That is basically what odd form is all about, it is being different and not afraid to look odd to the public. Some preferred casual looks, however most women and men around Kingston University prefer odd and uniqueness.

- The audience expect a website full of one on one advices on fashion. However, before we handed out the surveys they appreciated what Odd Form was all about. It was a place to release fashion photo shoots and share it around the world, to show what Odd Form's fashion sense is all about. The audience liked the fact Odd Form is all about inspiring people.

- Everyone expect a blogger to blog all the time, to be right on schedule and to always come up with new ideas on how to show material.

- Everyone disagreed to bright clashing colours, and prefer something very simple like a canvas!

After gathering the audience's perspectives on a fashion blog/website, we now know the right path. This will help us figure out the appearance of the website, the material and our roles.  

Proposal

Proposal

In our group proposal that has been made explains our concept, each person's roles, timelines, how to promote our website and material that will be used. 

The concept that we have all agreed on is about a fashion blog that features professional photography work, models that model the clothing, professional make up artists performing on models, an entertainment side to it and other things that will be discussed. 

The website's name has been figured out as it will be based on one of my friend's fashion blog company. I have been helping him with fashion shoots as I have been modelling the clothes he has chosen to feature on his blog. We also know make up artists that have helped out with make up for the shoots. A photographer is also one of our close friends that also helps the blog to take snaps of the clothes and make up. We had a deal that we'll be producing his website for him. This is a great challenge as it will give us the opportunity to promote his website. The website is 'www.oddform.co.uk' that has been purchased from the website called 'www.one.com' that provides us with the webhost to get our website up and going. 

A little summary of OddForm's background. It is based in London and on fashion in London. Odd Form is based on fashion and beauty. The point of the fashion blog will consist of modelling, analysing fashion and giving the audience some tips and advice on how to dress and new trends that will be coming out in the bear future. In our project we will not only be working with each other, we will be working with people who are actually working within the industry. Such as photographers, make up artists, director and models. The connections that we have with these certain people that have those certain roles will help the website very successful. As we know quite a few people, we needed to gather everyone in one group conversation via Whatsapp to discuss ideas and arranging dates.

The dates that have been arranged at the moment are:
19.02.14 - Meeting up with the Odd Form team to arrange dates and ideas.
10.03.14 - Photo shoot in Central London
23.03.14 - Photo shoot in Brighton
24.03.14 - Photo shoot in a studio
25.03.14 - Photo shoot in a studio

In our Prezi presentation, we have discussed promoting the website to give the audience an idea of our website and how to reach out to the audience. In our opinions and by reading many theories we know everything revolves around the social media. Whether it is about news, fashion, gossip, celebrities and politics everyone will hear about it and know about it. Even news that appear on television and newspapers always mention different social networks. Since social media is a place to reach out to somebody, to share a post and make it popular it would be a great place for us to promote our website. The problem is, how do we reach out to the audience less than a month? How to make our website and the company Odd Form popular and known? It depends on which social network we use, we want to go the extra mile mile and make accounts in Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Tumblr. To make the company and website popular we need to post creative posts, unique posts, use hashtags that relates to the posts and helping out other pages and accounts as they could possibly help us as well.

Themes & Concepts

Themes & Concepts 

It has been two weeks since we got ourselves into groups of three. We have discussed some ideas for our website. 

1st idea: A beauty and fashion blog. As me and Lara have both created a beauty blog, we figured out it would be ideal to continue with that theme and concept for the website. However the downside to it is that she has produced her website with Adobe Dreamweaver, and she is more familiar with it. I have been using Wordpress for the past few months to produce 'OneonOneBeauty' and I'm not too familiar with Adobe Wordpress. 

2nd idea: We liked Mari's idea as it was based on student life in our university. This is quite a unique idea, as many people stick with the typical beauty website or a music website. It is a way to stand out, however we need a lot of dedicated students that can meet us on time to avoid delays. This is a very risky process as it can take us down. 

3rd idea: I've started to get a little bored of producing make up tutorial videos and giving beauty advices. I want to do something different, however I want females that are the same age as us to be our audience. If we do fashion, I would want to take it to the next level and make it unique. We all like our concept to do with fashion. We also want to produce many different mediums such as videos, music, text and visuals. 

We have another week before we make our proposal on Prezi. We need to figure out we need to do by then and start immediately as we only have a month to hand in our final group website. 

Group Project

Group Project 

The group project is a Wordpress website filled with many different mediums that we have to produce as a group. We have few days to figure out who we want to work with. However, I have figured out who I want to work with as both of my colleagues have produced websites that are related to fashion, beauty and building a relationship with the audience. 

Lara has produced a blog website. I have looked at her website and was pretty impressed as she blogged about a lot of topics that everyone can relate to. From food to beauty and fashion. Mari on the other hand had a different website that was based on student life that attend our university. I really liked her idea as it was different from everyone else's ideas, unique and it relates to the audience as it helped her build a relationship with the audience. This gives us more ideas to put in our final group website. As for my website, it was about beauty which relates to Lara's website concept. It also relates to Mari's concept too as I communicated with the audience, and so did she. 

We have contacted our seminar tutor to let him know who we want to work with. We had a vague idea for our project. We have a few weeks to figure out our concept, the mediums that will be used and project roles. 

Address Blog & Website (TB1)

TB1 Individual Website: www.oneonone.com/here
TB1 Individual Blogger: http://k1219829.blogspot.co.uk/