Good web design and conventions

You should be finishing off your research work into school websites that are currently out there on the net,

You will be starting to get a good idea for what works well and what doesnt.

However some of you are new to web design and also media studies so ive added a link below to a very interesting website that talks through all the stages a professional web designer goes through when creating a website.

I suggest you have a look through it to start building up an idea of good design for the web.

http://www.webdesignfromscratch.com/

Dont assume that all the answers are on this page though! the internet is a busy place full of lots of different opinions, so make sure you take every oppourtunity to look around at whats out there.

Your tasks for today are to get your school website research up and on your blog, and to then research 'conventions of webdesign' and post about the following points;

• What is a convention?


• Why are they useful?


• Do we have to use them all the time?


• What examples of conventions are found in webdesign?


• You may link to websites with examples of web conventions or screen capture them and post them on your blog.


• I also want to see some examples of websites that bend or break the conventions, with your opinions of if they still work as a good design.

Here is an example of a website that breaks with the usual 'conventions' of a webpage and looks good.

Research and Planning for the preliminary task

Task 1. I have copied the marking scheme from the OCR specification for the foundation project Research and Planning Ive only included the top mark criteria as thats what you chaps are going to aim for!
have a read through what the examiner is looking for below, it is a rough guide to success.

Level 4 16–20 marks•
There is excellent research into similar products and a potential target audience.
• There is excellent organisation of actors, locations, costumes or props.
• There is excellent work on shotlists, layouts, drafting, scripting or storyboarding.
• Time management is excellent.
• There is excellent use of digital technology or ICT in the presentation.

Task 2: Your second task is to go and look at the homepages for several schools/colleges. Find ones that you think are good and screen grab up to 4 + pages and annotate them, you should mention:

Conventions of websites design.

• 
  
  Layout


• 
  
  Use of colour


• 
  
  The target audience


• 
  
  Ease of use/navigation


• 
  
  Photos and images


• 
  
  Use of text


• 
  
  Logos


• 
  
  The overall design of the website.

You need to develop an idea of what a good website has to include and state it. All of your work should be submitted to your own blog in a section entitled Research and Planning, you will add more to this later!

Here is an example that I've knocked up to show you how your research into current school/college websites
could be done. I have only looked at the home page, you will need to look at at least 3 of the website contents pages.




Task 3:
You need to write a few notes about each website you look at, this will mostly be expanding on the points you have made in already. If you are stuck here are some ideas for to get you started.

You need to pay particular attention to the overall style that each website carries through on to each page, is their a similiar layout or placing of objects on each page and what colours are used etc..,
Remember to also note who the potential audience of the website is and how the design is intended to appeal to them, and also what message the school is trying to get across about and what they offer.

AS Media studies

Here is the specification for this years AS Project,

you have to complete two tasks, the first is a practice piece that will help you learn the skills required to do a great job on the main practical task.

Website Preliminary exercise: A new homepage for a school/college.

This should include a photo of the institution, buttons to provide easy navigation to other areas of the site and appropriate welcomingtext. There should also be a working hyperlink to a media department page, also with a photo.
The task aims to demonstrate understanding of the software and of webpage conventions.

Main task: A charity or campaign website
produce a campaign website including sound and video for a campaign (eg political,health, charity, environmental). The site should include a logo, original photographs, (minimum four per candidate), written text, audio, video and easy navigation.

If done as a group task, each member of the group to produce at least four pages for the site, following the same house style.
All material for both tasks to be produced by the candidate(s), with the exception of musical audio effects from a copyright-free source.
Each candidate will evaluate and reflect upon the creative process and their experience of it.
Candidates will evaluate their work electronically, this evaluation being guided by a set of key questions on a pro forma to be completed by the teacher.
The format of the discussion has some flexibility and its form can be negotiated between teacher and student: it may take place with individual candidates or with the production group as a whole, or each individual candidate or production group may make a formal or informal presentation to the whole class.